Take My Hand
by arysani
Summary: AU - Sequel to "Death & Rebirth - Redux". Second chances at first loves. A tale of Severus Snape & Lily Potter. Rated "T", but there is a bit of coarse language - be warned.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I strongly suggest you read "Death & Rebirth - Redux" before beginning this story. It lays the groundwork for how this AU broke off from the normal timeline. And even though I said I wouldn't write this until after I finished "Aftermath", the sequel to the original "Death & Rebirth", it seems the peoples want Sev/Lily. And who is Strongbad to argue with the peoples?

I must also put out there that this is partially inspired by Didodikali's fanart, particularly "Lemondrop? Veriatiserum?", wherein Severus Snape looks decidedly more relaxed and at ease with himself. Something that might ordinarily be out of character, unless...g

It goes without saying that I do not own Harry Potter or any of JKR's characters, settings, made-up words and/or stories. Nor do I own Strongbad. He owns himself, obviously.

* * *

Their eyes met often over the long table where the Order of the Phoenix met.

They had been engaged in assisting the Ministry for the last four months, rounding up the errant Death Eaters, and while they still were lacking a very important follower in Bellatrix Lestrange, her husband Rodolphus was in custody. And while many of them lamented not being able to incarcerate Lucius Malfoy, who with the assistance of his family, was able to clear his name, he did provide the Ministry with some very important information, and their spy in the Death Eater ranks had never actually witnessed him killing or cursing anyone, simply running around being Voldemort's pet.

But the looks that lingered between Lily Potter and Severus Snape were always cut short, and then there would be a week before they would meet each other's gaze again.

Lily was no coward, however, she was a _Gryffindor_, and after five months of mumbled greetings and furtive glances, she approached him, and broke their tense peace.

"Sev?" She called him by a name he hadn't heard in years, the name she had called him when they were children, before he pushed her away, and she had begun calling him by his last name, like those demented friends of hers.

He turned to face her, uncertainty in his eyes.

"Mrs. Potter."

She cringed. It was her name, true, but he said it with such a coldness. She remembered that he had called her 'Lily' that day. Were they such strangers now that he wouldn't do it again?

"Sev, please. Talk to me."

"Why?" He leaned away from her, his body language screaming that he wanted out of this conversation. But she wasn't going to let him. She had lost her best friend once, and then again five months ago. She wanted back the only one she could have.

She couldn't think of a reply. She bit her lip in thought. "I just…I forgive you, okay?"

He pulled his neck in, like a turtle, and narrowed his eyes at her. "For what?"

"For what you said."

"What I…what the devil are you talking about Evans?"

His use of her pre-marriage surname caught them both by surprise, and they both looked away from each other, as though burned by the surge of memory.

"I mean," he began softly, "forgive me for what, Mrs. Potter?"

"You know."

He stared at her, his flat, analytical stare that she had seen several times before, but had never been the subject of except in jest.

"There's nothing to forgive," he said simply, and turned away from her.

Anger flared in her blood, and her pale skin flushed. She might have been grateful that they were the only people in the room if she had given enough thought to it. Instead, she charged forward and grabbed a black-cloaked arm, and spun the taller man towards her.

"Nothing to _forgive?!_ I'm trying to offer you an olive branch Severus, and you think you did nothing _wrong_?! Gods, how stupid can a person get?! Blame the fact that I lost my husband on my sudden flight of fancy from everything good sense! Augh!"

He just stared at her, slightly surprised, but vaguely remembering a conversation they'd had as children about red-heads and tempers. He was once familiar with that temper, once knew how to counter it. But now he had no words, he just shrank from her touch, trying to pull his forearm back from her grip, but she had her teeth bared at him, and did not let go.

"Mrs. Potter, I…"

"Stop calling me that!"

"But…"

Her jaw was still tense, but her voice dropped into a lower register, one that was considerably more dangerous.

"Severus Snape. You broke my heart that day, and I lost my best friend. I don't know what was going through your fool head, but you hurt me. And then I watched as you and those _friends_," she seethed the very word, and he looked at her warily, his lips pressing together as his own ire rose in response to hers. "Those _Death Eater _friends, played around with dark magics and you _buried_ yourself in them."

Her pause gave him the opening to rip his arm from her grasp, and sneer at her. "Oh, and your _friends_ were better, _Potter_? Do you know what those bastards did to me?! DO YOU? _Death Eaters_ treated me better! I admit, I got my fair share of jabs in on the small issues, but they left me with scars you can't even imagine!" This time he grabbed her arm, and pulled her close to his face, and spoke quietly and sharply, his rasp making her spine twitch. "Have you ever been afraid of the _dark_, Potter? Have you?! I'm twenty-two years old, and I'm _afraid_ of what lurks in the darkness because of those little…_children_."

She had known something had happened. Had known because instead of coming to her for a sympathetic ear and with an apology in tow like he had for so many lesser transgressions, he simply stopped speaking to her.

She thought it meant he wasn't sorry, and she cried herself to sleep more than one night because of it.

But he was a grown man now, as much as she was a grown woman, despite their ages. People grew up fast in the midst of a war. And she thought he had changed. Thought he would at least have the decency to admit he'd made a mistake.

"And that meant it was okay to insult me and run off, abandoning me?" She gave as good as she got, and narrowed her gaze to meet his, green eyes flashing.

He let her arm go and leaned back, displeasure still on his face, but also a trace of confusion.

"Abandoning you? How do you figure? Those…_Marauder_ friends of yours were more than company. Hell, you married one of them."

The words fell into awkward silence, and he bit his tongue, wishing he could take them back.

Her anger cooled somewhat, as the battlefield was littered with misread intentions and unspoken words. Seven years and they still couldn't sort themselves out.

"Severus, we were friends, don't you get that? _Friends_. Close. Friends." She stuttered on the last two words, a strange feeling gripping her heart as she remembered how, once or twice, they were never as close as she wanted. And then she felt guilty, horribly completely guilty, because she had buried her husband less than half a year ago, and here she was, dredging up feelings that were long dead. Or so she had thought.

"And?" He waited for her to finish her thought, impatient at her far-off look.

"And I would have forgiven you. If only you had asked. I forgave you everything else, didn't I?"

His shoulders slumped, as though in defeat, and he let out a sigh. He wasn't going to fight anymore. He was sick and tired of fighting.

"I never got the chance, Lily," he said softly. "Sirius Black made sure I knew where the line was drawn, and that you and he and Potter and Lupin and Pettigrew were on one side of that line, and I was on the other. I may be slow when it comes to people, but I'm not stupid. I had no desire to test him after what I found he was capable of that night."

"And what about me?"

"What about you?" He knew he didn't want to fight, but somehow she thought herself innocent in all this. "You didn't try either. You knew how they treated me in the light of day, and you didn't try either."

"I _defended _you!"

He nodded once, giving her that. "You did. And most of the time I was equal to the task, giving what I had gotten. But wasn't it suspicious in the least that there was no more mostly-harmless hexing and word-slinging? It didn't strike you as at all strange that they suddenly left me completely alone?"

She realized she had never thought on it. She had watched as he walked past her, or avoided her entirely, never meeting her gaze, and she had only thought of how much it had hurt, and it had, a _lot_, but never noticed that aside from the usual, though reduced, complement of mild name calling, they had left him alone.

"What did they do to you?" She asked quietly, her own pain forgotten as she came to realize how something outside themselves had pushed them apart.

He stared at her for a moment, before looking away, crossing his arms across his chest and leaning back against the wall. "Nevermind."

"No, not nevermind. What did they do, Severus?"

He tried to avoid her gaze, he felt it burning into his face. He turned slowly to face her. "I said forget about it. It's in the past. And frankly, as you have so aptly brought back to my attention," he waved his hand idly in the air, "my past is not all puppies and rose petals. I would much rather forget about it entirely."

"Sev…"

"No, Lily. Leave me alone." He turned away from her entirely this time, and swept out of the room.

She stood there, alone, tears threatening at her lids, and realized this was not the conversation she had meant to have. She had meant to say "I forgive you, thank you for being there, thank you for trying to save him", and thought they might part on amiable terms, leaving room to rebuild the friendship they once had as children, despite the lives they led that drove them apart.

But they weren't children anymore. And the wounds were apparently still very fresh.

* * *

A/N: Well, if you want more you have to leave a review. :) And tell me how you think it's going, theories and what not, and definitely correct me if I've gotten something amiss. It's been awhile, and my HP books are three thousand miles away. I know, I know, there's no excuse! In the meantime, check out the original "Death & Rebirth" and its sequel, "Aftermath". Do some comparisons. It's amazing how one tiny event can change a person entirely...


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Okay. Short chapter, I know. But I felt it was a good place to end it. Enjoy. And remember, reviews make the chapters appear faster :)

* * *

He cursed himself for arguing with her like that. It had become too heated, too quickly. He wanted nothing more than to console her, hold her as she cried, tell her it was all for her.

But she had scraped her fingernails over scabs that had not completely healed, and he rose to her occasion, as he had so many times before, feeling keenly a frustration borne from the fact that she could always upset his calm.

_I should go back and apologize._

_Apologize for what?_

_I...she's lost her husband, she was looking for a friend, and I…_

_You did exactly what she needed. You brought her back to reality._

_A slap in the face is not what she needed._

_It is. You can't be soft with her. That will never lead to anything good._

_Never?_

_Never._

"Severus?" Albus Dumbledore snapped him out of his thoughts.

He was sitting in the library of Hogwarts, waiting for the headmaster, and realized he'd not read one paragraph of the book that lay open on his lap.

He rose. "Headmaster."

Dumbledore let out a chuckle. "Outside of these walls, you feel free to call me by my given name, but one step inside them and you are the student once again."

Severus nodded once. "Old habits…sir."

"Indeed, indeed," Dumbledore assented, and then stepped to the side, gesturing towards the door.

"Shall we?"

Severus nodded again, and led the way towards Dumbledore's office.

# # # # #

"Honeydrop," Dumbledore intoned, and the gargoyle nodded, opening the spiral staircase to the headmaster's office.

Once inside, he swept behind his desk, and gestured for Snape to sit.

"Headmaster, why have you brought me here?"

Dumbledore turned to him, having been engaged in arranging the tea, and raised an eyebrow.

"Don't waste any time at all, do you Severus?"

Snape just stared at him. "Sir."

"Severus, I wanted to offer you a position. Here, at Hogwarts," Dumbledore said plainly, and gestured to his walls, as though everything Hogwarts was began and ended here in this office. As Severus looked around at the portraits that adorned each nook and cranny, portraits of those who had been headmaster before, he didn't think that assumption was very far off the mark.

He turned back to face Dumbledore, who stood expectantly, the tea service forgotten in the moment.

"As what?"

"Potions Master. Slughorn has decided to retire, to do all the things he never got to do, or somesuch. I suppose war does that to some people – makes them re-evaluate their…_choices_." He looked significantly at the young man seated before him, who had leaned back in the chair, and crossed one leg over the other, steepling his fingers. He rested his nose on his fingers in thought.

His eyes darted up to meet Dumbledore's. He dropped his hands, and gripped the armrests.

"You know there is a position I would be much more adept at."

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows; somehow again, amused and surprised at his bluntness.

"Indeed?"

Severus nodded. "Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"Indeed." He appeared to mull it over a moment before replying. "But I do believe, Severus, that what we need is a Potions Master, not a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor."

Severus leaned forward. "But you know I'm more qualified! You know, my experiences, they would…"

"They would certainly be of use, I know," Dumbledore interrupted. "But right now, we need a _Potions Master_, and I see no reason to involve yourself in…subjects which might recall certain…loyalties."

Severus rose angrily from the chair, and swept behind it, almost leaving the room. Then he turned in a whirl of robes, unable to leave the conversation to die. Unable to not have the last word.

"You still don't trust me! After all I've done for you!" He pointed his finger accusingly at the Headmaster. "After all I've done, haven't I proven where my loyalties lie?!"

Dumbledore gave him a heavy stare. "And what if your reason were in danger again, hmm? Could you guarantee me your loyalty then? Could you be absolutely, without-exception loyal to the same cause if it meant losing the very thing you defected for in the first place?"

"Don't you dare bring her into this!" Severus hissed.

"I did no such thing. You began this tirade by insisting I place you in a position I don't need to be filled. I did not bring up anything that you had not first placed on the table, Severus," he replied, never raising his voice, speaking in the same calm tones as he had the entire conversation, despite being directly accused.

His ire still not sated, Severus stared at the man with a sneer on his face.

"You don't trust me, and yet you would put the lives of your students at risk?"

"At risk? I did not believe I was doing so."

"I would be their professor, their young, malleable minds mine to command. Who's to say that I wouldn't turn them all into Death Eaters?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Let us just say that for the moment, I am going to trust that your intentions would not be to do any such thing. After all, the Dark Lord is dead. Whom would they serve?"

Severus let a less-than-jovial smile grace his lips. "Me, of course. I was one of Voldemort's closest advisors, the very position which you used to get rid of him perhaps served my own purposes as well."

He nodded again. "It is possible, I suppose." He lifted a hand in light mocking and replied, "of course, were it possible, I would have to reevaluate many of my choices, because obviously I am no judge of character."

Severus could not tender a reply. He stared at the ground, pensive. Of course he had no intention of doing any such thing, and while he didn't really want Dumbledore to believe it, a small part of him did want the old man to know he was no pawn of the Order, no person to be trifled with. And he wanted him to know he resented the man's lack of trust in him. It wasn't just Lily that brought him to the Order – though she was the reason he snapped out of his coma – he had honestly realized his mistakes. He realized that all the sacrifices they were making were for naught – the greater good was gaining nothing from what the Dark Lord offered. Power was all well and good, but there would be no end to the tortures, the killing. It was not just a coup; it was a new realization of life and the world. And it was one he could not be party to.

"Potions Master, eh?"

Dumbledore smiled, but let the smile fade a bit before the young man met his eyes. "Potions Master."

Severus swallowed hard, his flinty glare no longer angry, but simply pensive as he considered the offer.

"I have no idea how to be a teacher."

Dumbledore shrugged. "You will learn, Severus. You will learn."

* * *

A/N: Okay, so the relationship between the two was obviously strained since the beginning, but it wasn't until after Snape realized Dumbledore was using Lily's son as a means to an end that perhaps he really mistrusted the man. Wary of his intentions, sure, because he had seen there was more to him than the cheerful headmaster - but without that outright animosity, I imagined instead it would be a strange cat-and-mouse, or rather, cat-and-cat, because Severus thinks himself the superior to many men, and he was not to be cowed by any of them. But without Lily's death to also make him more submissive to what Dumbledore offered, because he, in fact, did NOT lose everything he held dear, perhaps there would be more tete-a-tetes? Tell me what you think - characterization is my love in story-telling, so I want to know what everyone else thinks of my imaginings...


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Okay. I'll try to get these chapters to be longer. I just keep ending up with moments that end so well, I can't make myself change scenery and still keep in line with the feel of the previous section. So you'll have more chapters than I intended (in number, anyhow). There are still some kinks to be worked out about the future of the storyline - namely the inevitable interaction with young Harry. I've got some scenes written, but none that I'm totally happy with. Luckily, we're not there yet, so hopefully it'll work itself out. In the meantime, more Sev/Lily! (Even if they can't get it together yet...)

* * *

Severus picked through the tight aisle, tossing aside bags of herbs and shoving jars with questionable contents. He was looking for something very specific, something he was sure this shop had, if only he could find it.

He tucked a loose lock of hair that had escaped his tie back behind his ear, out of his face, and peered into a dark shelf. His eyes lit up with recognition, and as he reached back into the deep recesses of the shelf, his head tilted to gain maximum reach, he was startled by a voice.

"Severus."

He jerked his head up, banging the shelf, and loosening it, causing not only its contents, but many of the contents of the (luckily) single shelf above it, to spill haphazardly around him.

He rubbed his head, and turned fiercely to face the intruder, tongue ready to lash out a very unfriendly greeting, when his eyes widened, recognizing the person who stood there.

_It's very close in here. These aisles are too narrow. She's standing very close._

He swallowed, regaining his composure, and gave her a half-hearted sneer. "What do you want?"

She seemed taken aback by his icy response, and watched him as he turned rubbing his injury into smoothing his hair back.

"I'm sorry, I'm not following you or anything, I just…I saw you in here when I walked by, and…I'm sorry about the other day."

That other day was nearly two weeks ago, and he had been trying very diligently to forget it. He had flip-flopped back and forth between justified furor and guilt borne from lack of reticence. Thankfully, with the new term starting in a mere fortnight, his attentions as of late were more focused in the category of "oh shit, what now?"

"Forget about it, E…Potter." He berated himself silently for almost slipping. Again.

She plowed past his misspoken address. "No. I shouldn't've pressed you. You're right, we haven't been friends for a long time, and I was wrong to assume that we could just pick that back up again. I didn't mean to upset you."

He was having difficulty with reconciling the fiery girl of his youth with the humble woman before him. Their argument, while the subject left a bit to be desired, was more like their friendship had been – giving no ground until there was no ground left to wrest from the other, challenging each other and letting no ill-placed word lie until it was beaten to death. She had been the person he could really fight with, go toe to toe with, and still get a hug later. He softened slightly, and folded his arms across his chest.

"No, you don't need to apologize. Really. I was being a git too."

She looked taken aback, except for the ghost of a smile that hovered around her eyes. "I didn't say I was being a git. I said I was sorry that I let you being one make me say things I shouldn't've."

He snorted softly, almost a laugh through his nostrils. "Oh well, if that's the case."

"Really, Sev. I mean it. I had meant to thank you. For…for trying to save him. Dumbledore told me…he told me that you…you came for them, that you…got there…" She faded, and the threat of her emotions overtaking her, even when she thought she was alright to talk about it, made her clench her fist, digging her nails into her palm to keep from crying.

"Too late. I got there too late, Lily. All I could do was watch him die," he finished softly.

She gave him a sad smile. "But you tried. And that means a lot to me."

_Merlin, what I wouldn't give to take her in my arms right now._

He shook his head once, quickly, trying to dispel the traitorous thought.

She took a deep breath, and gave him a brighter smile, and flexed her hands at her sides. "But enough about me. Dumbledore tells me you're to be the Potions Master at Hogwarts?"

He stared at her warily, unsure how to take the change of subject, her false joy. "Yeah. Slughorn is retiring."

"That's great, Sev. Really great. You'll be great."

This time his snort was louder, and less a laugh, more a derisive sound of shock. "You too? Great? I hate children. They're loud, they're unpolished, they're…" He waved his hand in the air, trying to pull more epithets for "disgusting" out of his repertoire.

She laughed out loud this time, and it seemed so genuine that he was snapped out of his thoughts to stare at her, mouth slightly agape.

"Sev, seriously, you kill me. You really do."

He raised an eyebrow in suspicion. "How so?"

She shook her head, and shoved her hands into her back pockets, leaning back on her heels slightly. "You love Potions. Heck, _I _loved Potions. But you were really good at it – you created things that Slughorn never could have even dreamed. You were an artist, Sev, and it was so obviously your passion. Don't you want that back?"

"What, a chance at artistry?"

"Yeah, your passion."

_My passion was always you, Lily._

"I suppose. It's not like I ever stopped, even when…" he trailed off. She knew 'even when'.

Silence descended over them. While they had leapt into an argument about the past before, this one was about a past far too recent, and neither of them was ready to bring it up.

She changed the subject. "What were you looking for in here, anyway?"

He turned to the shelf, and, righting it back in its slats, reached in for the small bag of seeds, which he held by the top and jostled in her view. "Norwegian digitalis."

She raised her eyebrows. "Isn't that a bit dangerous to have around kids?"

"It's a bit dangerous to have around anyone. But if I can get it to germinate, I can use it in all manner of recipes."

"But…how do you? I mean, I thought you couldn't touch it even when it was germinating?"

He turned the plastic and wax package of dormant seeds in his hand, looking at it pensively. "Can't use my wand, either. Damn stuff is awfully sensitive to magics. Those Norwegians know how to challenge a person."

She frowned, staring at the innocuous seeds which would give rise to a plant that was dangerous enough when touched, but whose flowers were so beautiful as to entice one to stick their nose in the blossoms, getting an extra potent dose of its drug inhaled straight into their brain. Not a nice way to go.

"Be careful with that stuff."

"Always am," he said, and he almost smiled.

* * *

A/N: Digitalis, commonly known as "foxglove" does actually have pretty flowers. It's used to make heart medications, and the absorption of even a small amount of oil from the leaves into the bloodstream via the skin can cause heart palpitations. The Norwegian strain I made up completely, seeings as Norway is a more hardy sort of place, I thought that in turn, it could produce a more dangerous plant. Normally, the flowers are just pretty, not at all dangerous, even if you do stick your nose in them. Unless of course there's a bee already in there. That could definitely be painful.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Much longer chapter this time - woo! A big thank you to my single reviewer, excessivelyperky! This chapter took a path I didn't intend, but as they say, sometimes the characters do write the story, even if they aren't your own. I blame "Pride & Prejudice" playing in the background.

* * *

She wasn't sure what made her come here.

She looked up at the walls of the school that had been her home for ten years. She smiled. It was the first day of the term, and she saw children of every year, every house, milling around in black robes, the crest of the school on one side, and the raiments of their house marked off elsewhere. Some of the older boys and girls had unbuttoned their robes in the strangely warm September sunshine, and loosened their school ties or unknotted them completely as they hung around their necks.

Others yet had pinned trimmings of house colors in varying accepted and unaccepted (unless the rules had changed so drastically since she roamed the halls) places on their robes or person, declaring loyalties from their collars to, as she watched with a blush, tassels on parts of the female anatomy that got more than just a wink from their peers, but a hand reached out to flick the tassels in admiration of the developments that had taken place over the summer.

She looked away, trying to think of what McGonagall would've said if she caught any of her Gryffindors twirling tassels on any of _her_ girls'…chests.

Luckily her gaze landed on a group of boys who obviously already had the Quidditch season underway, rolling up one leg of their pants to reveal a striped knee-sock in the appropriate colors, a strange yet familiar gesture of the sport.

"Miss Lily!" A booming voice snapped her out of her reverie. She turned to face the enormous gamekeeper with a grin on her face.

He closed the distance between them with a few large strides, and leaned down to envelope her in a hug.

"Oof! Hagrid, a bit tight there," she said with a laugh, and patted him on his large shoulder, which was as far as she could reach.

He released her, and laid his large paws on her shoulders. She tried not to shift under their weight.

"Miss Lily," his voice grew somber. "I'm sorry ter hear about yer husband. Young James was a good man. Fightin' fer justice an' all tha'." The emotion caused a tear to form at the corner of his eye, which he wiped away.

"Thank you, Hagrid. It means a lot," she reached up a hand and laid it on his on her shoulder.

He pulled her into another embrace, not so tight this time, and she let him.

This time when he let her go, he had gathered himself and looked at her with the joy he had expressed at first recognizing her.

"Wha' brings yeh here ter Hogwarts? Surely yer not to be a Professor too?"

She laughed lightly. "Oh no. Why? Who else is here?" She wondered if it were more than just Severus who had taken a position at the school, as Hagrid certainly seemed to be referring to more than one.

"Oh, young Mister Snape and Master Lupin! Seems that Dumbledore is replenishin' the ranks of the school with members of the Order."

She felt a pang of…what was it? Some strange emotion that was feeling…left out. She had spoken to Sirius only yesterday, and left her son with him while she got out of the house, and while she hadn't seen Lupin since the last meeting (useless as it was, they were held as scheduled), she would have expected that he would have told her. Weren't they friends, even without her husband around to link them? Sirius had been distant, for sure, but it wasn't long ago that she was close to Lupin as well. And somehow his failure to tell her his good news hurt.

But she did not let the gamekeeper know her turmoil. Instead she gave him her brightest smile. "I heard Severus was given the position of Potions Master, but what is Remus teaching?"

"Defense Agains' the Dark Arts, a'course! What with bein' on the front line an' all, he was definitely the man fer the job!"

She kept her lips sealed about his…condition. Apparently it wasn't as known as she had thought, even to the other members of the Order. She smiled a little at still being privy to some secrets.

"That's wonderful. I was actually here to see…"

_Severus._

"Dumbledore. But I'll have to check in on Remus as well."

Hagrid frowned slightly. He had spent a lot of time observing students over the years, and remembered that once she had spent a lot of time in the company of a particular Slytherin. But times change. He gave her a smile before she had a chance to question his expression.

"And come down ter the hut for tea later, alrigh'? It's been some time since yeh've done tha'," he finished with a grin, and she nodded, promising to do so if she had time, and he waved goodbye, lumbering off to Merlin knows where.

She looked back up at the castle, and made her way towards the gates, back towards the place of her youth.

# # # # #

"_Come onnn Sev! We can't be late to our FIRST lesson!" Her red hair fluttered behind her as she yelled over her shoulder, but he hadn't hit his growth spurt yet, and her legs were longer. He hefted his bookstrap tighter under his arm and ran faster._

"_Lily! Wait up!"_

_They had both burst into the Transfiguration classroom completely out of breath._

"_Miss Evans. Mister Snape. Five points from each of your Houses. Tardy on the first day, really?" She looked over her spectacles at them. "And a member of my own house, Miss Evans!" They stood in the aisle, frozen. "Take your seats," she gestured to the only two empty seats – across the room from each other._

_Lily slid into the seat next to a black-haired Grffindor boy, who gave her a cheeky grin. Severus was forced to sit next to a member of his own house, a surly boy who did not smile at him. He looked around furtively, and caught the eye of a blonde girl. She stared at him a moment, no emotion on her face, before turning her head, her posture perfect, to face the front of the room. He swallowed and unbuckled his bookstrap, sliding out his quill and notebook._

_She watched him from across the room. He was so nervous, in the middle of all those other people, that he couldn't stop touching his hair. He smoothed it back, and tucked it back, and only made its unwashed shininess worse. She frowned, before being poked in the back by another black-haired boy, this time one with spectacles, who gave her a toothy grin, and handed her the study sheets that had been passed from back to front._

# # # # #

The Potions classroom was in the same place it had been for the last seventeen years – probably longer.

Lily stepped down the permanently damp stone steps towards the old dungeons. Reaching the door, she heard calamity coming from inside.

"Stop that! Pay attention!"

And then, as though by unheard signal, there was the sound of twenty chairs all scraping backwards at once.

"Did I say you could leave?"

"Professor Snape, sir, we need to go to the rest of our classes."

She heard him scoff angrily. "Of course, a _Ravenclaw_ worried about her next class. Figures. Get out of my sight."

And the door opened, and sixteen petrified children, and four who were very obviously trying to keep in their laughter, filed out the door.

When they were gone, she ducked around the door, and leaned into the doorway, her eyes scanning the room.

She watched as a young man, too young, really, to be a professor, leaned against the desk at the front of the dark, gloomy room, the heels of his palms pressed against his forehead. He had gritted his teeth in a very unbecoming scowl, and then he tipped his head back and let out a frustrated half-yell.

"Aaaaaugh!"

She jumped, and then, after a moment of staring, she knocked calmly on the doorjamb.

"What?!"

Then he tilted his head forward, and opened his eyes.

And he straightened his posture.

"Lily! What are you doing here?"

"Your first day, I came…to congratulate you."

He scoffed. "For what?"

She smiled. "You're still here."

"Hah. Hardly. I'm quitting."

"Severus Snape, quitting? I can't believe I'm hearing this! Whatever happened to," she dropped her voice a register, furrowing her brow, and swung her hand around theatrically. "A challenge? I'm above challenges! There is nothing you could ask me to do that I couldn't run around you in circles accomplishing!" She regained her normal voice. "Why would your ego abandon you now?"

He looked thoroughly disgusted with her. "I meant a challenge of craft, a challenge of wits. This," he gestured to the empty classroom. "This is nonsense. First years aren't human."

She laughed.

And he almost smiled. He missed her laugh.

"Sev, you can't give up. Just think of what you could teach these kids! Think of all the knowledge imparted on you…"

"All the knowledge I imparted on _myself_, you mean?"

"You had to've learned _something_ here."

He shrugged. "I learned how to look like I was paying attention while simultaneously not."

She took a few steps further into the room. "You have so much to offer them, can't you just _try_?"

"Lily, I _am _trying. I made a fool of myself today. They don't respect me, and not that I care, but they don't _like_ me either. I have spent the last year saving the world, and the six before that damning it. I'm in no position to impart wisdom on _children_."

A few steps further, and she was at the third row of desks.

She stood there in silence, and swallowed her lack of words. She stared at the floor. She reached out a hand absently to run her fingers over the wood of the nearest desk, over all the intents and scratches. Then her head shot up, and she caught his gaze, and a smile spread slowly across her face.

He couldn't help looking bemused, a matching smile _almost_ gracing his own lips.

"What?" He said quietly, and she gave him a toothy grin, and ran up a row, and over to the third joint-desk, and placed her hands on either side of it, peering at it, her hair falling over her face.

He walked over to stand in front of the row, and bent over slightly, trying to get a look at her face, or whatever it was she was looking at.

Her fingers found what she had been seeking, and she poked it hard, lifting her head to see if he had been paying attention.

"There."

He looked confused. "There what?"

"Don't you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"Look, silly," she gestured that he come closer, and he wedged his narrow body between the rows to get a closer look at what her finger had found.

Etched in the corner of the desk, roughly as though with the point of a quill instead of smoothly with a wand, were the letters: "SS + LE BF4E"

She smiled, watching his face as he read, forming the letters with his lips, but never making a sound.

"That was a long time ago."

Her smile faded, and she clenched her teeth, tensing her jaw, trying not to take the response for more than face value of a simple statement of time past. But she knew it was.

"Sev," she said quietly.

He looked up at her, and his eyes were a little sad. "Lily. That was a long time ago."

He straightened his posture, and walked away, back between the desks, his hands clasped behind his back. He stood up at the front of the room, his back to her, and the silence was deafening.

"I wish I could just forget the past," he said quietly, his back still to her, and she just listened. "I did things, I said things, things I shouldn't have, things I…regret. I know."

He inhaled, and because he didn't have to look at her, found the courage to continue. "I loved you Lily, and not just as a friend, as you believed. I wanted more, and I couldn't…stomach that you chose them over me." He was quiet again, and she blamed her still-delicate emotional balance on the fact that she wanted to cry. But there was nothing she could think to say.

"I…still…I still love you…Lily. I never…never stopped," he continued, his voice now nearly a whisper. "And…and I left the Death Eaters because he was going to kill you, only then realizing…how big of a mistake I'd…a mistake I'd made. But I was too late. Too late to save the man _you _loved. I wanted to do that for you, wanted you to be happy…"

He was so concentrated on getting his words out that he didn't hear her moving, didn't hear her approach him. Then her hand was on his arm, and he let himself be turned towards her.

"Sev, look at me," she reached up to his face, and he was trying until the last moment not to let her see, where tear tracks had made their way down his cheeks.

He did, and saw she had shed a tear or two herself. His heart sank, knowing she only felt sorry for him. He could tell, always could tell, when she felt sorry for him.

"Lily, I'm sorry, I shouldn't've…"

But he didn't get to finish his thought, because she leaned up and pressed her lips to his.

The moment lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like eternity. She pulled away, and opened her eyes first, and saw that his were still closed. She smiled a little.

"Hold me," she said quietly, and laid her head on his chest, sliding her hands under his robes to his back. He wrapped his arms around her, laying his head atop hers. One hand moved slowly, stroking the small of her back, and she sighed, biting back the guilt that threatened to overwhelm her. She took deep breaths, and just let herself be held.

Neither of them heard the skip of steps down the stairs.

"Lily, what're you doing dow…"

They sprang apart, but not quick enough. She faced the doorway, taking in the familiar face, and he had his back to the door, as though engaged with something on the table.

"Remus!"

* * *

A/N: -peeks out from between fingers- Well?

Sidenote: I hate that FFNet takes out my asterisks and my equal signs. Anyone know a way around that? Eesh.


	5. Chapter 5

Remus Lupin just stared, stock still in the doorway.

"Lily, I…I came down here, heard you were here, at…at Hogwarts, I mean…" he stuttered, his eyes wide. "I used the…the m…what were you doing?"

"Hmm?"

"I said, what were you doing? It looked like…"

"What does it matter what it looked like, _Lupin_?" Severus turned to face him.

Lily swallowed, and shot a look at him – he never knew how Lupin was the only one of the Marauders who occasionally defended her defense of him. He was actually on their side.

"It _matters_ because I am really hoping I didn't just see my _dead friend's wife_ in the arms of another man, that's why it _matters_." He hadn't intended to get angry, he always tried not to get angry, but the other man had just leapt into the fray with teeth bared, and he couldn't let him walk all over him.

"Remus," Lily began, and took a step towards the door. Severus watched her halting progress, and made no move to stop her. He felt disgusted that he had thought what just happened had any sort of meaning. She was probably just trying to get him to stop talking. Because there she went, choosing them over him. Again.

"No, really. What did I just see? Tell me the truth, Lils."

"I…" she began, and stopped.

And he couldn't stomach her trying to make excuses. "She came down here to see me, and now she's leaving. End of story. Goodbye!" He waved his hand at the both of them, and she turned to face him, but he'd already turned away.

"Severus," she began, looking back and forth between him and Remus.

"Goodbye!" He said again sharply, and waved them off.

She was rooted to the spot, couldn't figure out what was going on.

He turned to face them, and crossed his arms across his chest, a look of bemused cynicism on his face. "I'm sorry, are you confusing 'goodbye' with 'please, stay here'? They are two very different things, you know. I have no time for catching up with old _friends_. Now, if you could just leave my classroom, that would be grand. Toodle-oo, auf wiedersehen, sayonara! Good-byyyye!"

She frowned at his harsh tone. And she suddenly couldn't believe she'd kissed him. He hadn't changed at all.

"You're a jerk, you know that?" She rasped.

He shrugged, raising an eyebrow. "What's it to you?"

She just stared at him, her face scrunched in anger, and tears threatened to overwhelm her again, this time for a completely different reason. Then she turned on her heel and marched out of the room, her march turning into a run as she got closer to the door, and she ran past Remus and up the stairs, and a single sob echoed down the stairwell.

He watched her go, his arms dropped to his sides, and then was aware of being stared at.

"Nice job, Snape. Real nice."

"And what's it to _you_?" he sneered.

"I knew you were down here with her. I just didn't expect…"

"Expect what?"

"To see what I saw."

"You didn't see a damn thing, Lupin. Get out of my classroom."

Lupin shook his head, and turned away, his hands in his pockets. "It's your life, I suppose."

"Yes, yes it is. Go away."

Remus opened his mouth to reply, but then shook his head, and started forward, leaving the door open behind him, and then his step quickened as he climbed the stairs, to go after his friend.

# # # # #

Remus found her scrunched in an alcove in the hallway between Charms and the girls' bathroom. Her knees pulled to her chest, and her head hidden in her arms, he could hear her crying.

"Lily," he said softly, and suddenly he felt sixteen all over again. The last time he'd found her like this…

"_Lily, what's the matter?"_

"_What do you mean, what's the matter? Didn't you hear what he called me? A _Mudblood_! He…why did he say that, Remus? I mean, we've been fighting a lot more lately," she lifted her head, and wiped the tears roughly from her face. "But I didn't think…I didn't think he _hated_ me."_

"_Lily, I'm sorry, they were out of order, and I should have stopped them."_

"_It's not your fault," she managed to smile at him through her tears. "He…it's his fault, and I…" she shrugged. "That's it for me. I mean, I tried to get through to him, that he's getting involved with dangerous people, that…I care about him, and I can't stand to see him doing…" she looked at him furtively, trying not to give away exactly what they'd fought about. "And he just doesn't care. He doesn't care about himself, he doesn't care about me. And I'm not going to waste any more tears on it. I'm not. I can't," she started to say, and then they were found._

"_Evans, he's going to pay for that!"_

"_No, Sirius, it's none of your concern," she began, and reached her hand out to him._

"_None of my concern? He insults my best girl," he stepped forward and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and used his thumb to wipe away the tears. "He won't get away with it."_

"_Don't. It's over. We're not friends anymore. You don't need to defend me against him."_

_Sirius just smiled at her, and she felt a little scared at that smile. "We'll take care of it, right boys?"_

_Lupin just stared at him, Potter nodded awkwardly, and Pettigrew nodded emphatically._

"Remus, don't. I can't explain myself to you right now."

He sat awkwardly next to her, his hands on the cool stone of the carved bench. "You don't need to explain yourself."

She looked up at him, and with movement that gave him déjà vu, she straightened her legs, and wiped away her tears. "Hah. And so what were you going to infer from the situation?"

He gave her a tight smile. "I was going to infer that I found my friend being consoled by someone else she thought was _her_ friend."

"Liar," she said, and let out a short laugh.

He smiled, more genuinely this time. "Maybe. But only because I love you, and I want you to know that I don't judge you. It's not my place."

She was silent for a moment, biting her lip in thought. "I have a _kid_, Remus. My husband hasn't even been dead a _year_ and I'm throwing myself at someone else. What does that say about me?"

He shrugged. "You're a pretty girl – I wouldn't mind a pretty girl throwing herself at _me_."

She punched him in the arm, and he grabbed the sore spot. "Oww. What was that for?"

"For making me feel better."

"Oh, so now I get beat for doing good deeds? What is this world coming to?"

"Really, Remus." She was quiet again, and then she looked at him. "Am I a horrible person?"

"What? No. Why would you think that?"

She looked back at the floor. She couldn't think of how to express in words her tumult of emotions.

"What, you're a horrible person for trying to move on with your life?"

She just looked at him and nodded.

"I mean, I can't say I'm in love with your choice, but…" his voice dropped, and he put his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him, and he looked directly in her eyes. "James wouldn't've wanted you to mope around all the time. You deserve a second chance, Lily. You've got a son to care for, and who needs a mother who's…who's _happy_." He paused. "Do you really think he can make you happy?"

She looked at the floor. "Obviously not. I mean…he basically threw me out."

Remus snorted, and leaned back, crossing one leg over the other and his arms across his chest. "I should have been a psychologist."

"What?"

"Or maybe it's just because I was standing there observing the whole thing."

"What?!"

"That look on his face when you walked away from him. He thinks you're abandoning him."

"How can you tell?"

"The quiet ones always know," he smiled. "He was angry with the situation, not really with you, I don't think. He'll cool off. Just give him time."

She snorted. "You don't know him like I know him."

"You're right, I don't."

She was quiet. "So you think I should just…give him time?"

He shrugged again. "Like you said, I don't know him like you do. And…like _I _said, I'm not crazy about your choice, but, we're friends, right?" He leaned forward and clapped a hand back on her shoulder. "If this is what you want, I'm here for you." He pulled her into a hug.

She laid her head on his shoulder. "Thanks Remus." She took a deep breath, and then pulled away.

"Friends, right? So why didn't you tell me you got this job at Hogwarts?"

He gave her a lopsided grin. "I…I didn't want to jinx it."

"Jinx it? How?"

"You know. I mean, I was surprised as surprised gets when he offered me the job."

"Remus, he knows. I'm sure he took it into consideration."

"Yeah, but...still. If he knows, it only stands to reason someone _else_ could find out, and I'd be out of the job before I was in it."

She took his hand, in hers, and patted it. "You'll be fine. And besides, you've been taking that potion, right?"

He nodded. "But I can't take it forever. Sometimes I just have to…and I'm sure the last thing parents want is for their kids to be taught by a…it's not like being a centaur or something like that. It's…_catching_. I would never want a student…"

She laughed, and he looked horrified. "Never would happen."

"What?"

"Never would happen. It's not like it's going to happen in a _classroom_. You said you can feel it. Gives you more than enough time to sound the alarm and get yourself someplace safe."

"But someplace safe for me isn't always safe for somebody else…" he trailed off.

"Huh?"

"Nevermind."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then the hallways started to fill with students.

"Guess I better get going. I've got a class to teach," he said, and rose, ducking out of the alcove. She followed him, and then leaned up to place a kiss on his cheek. He smiled and touched the spot. "Gee, thanks."

She smiled. "No, thank _you_."

He nodded. "You have to do what you think is right."

"Yeah. But it's going to have to wait. I've left Sirius alone far too long. God only knows what he's getting himself into."

Remus let out a laugh. "Probably a nap."

She smiled. "Probably. Good luck, okay?"

"Thanks Lils," he replied, and gave her a return peck on the cheek. Then he turned and disappeared down the hallway, waving to her as he walked away, one hand in his pocket.

She watched him disappear, then, with one lingering look at the dungeon stairwell, she headed back towards the front gates.

* * *

A/N: I always liked Lupin. Always loved that he was the peacemaker - as much as he hated to get involved. And you didn't think it could go off without a hitch the first time, did you? What fun is there in happy endings already? Leave a struggling ficcer some review-love, eh? :)


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: I'm shocked my own self about the length of some of these chapters. Damn near proud, too. A big thank-you to all my reviewers, few that you are, for really making me pick my brain - and to Silver Point Despair: ENTER SIRIUS BLACK. grin (And to think, I had this written before I received your review!)

* * *

As he sat at his desk, grading the first papers of the term, he idly wondered if _he'd_ ever written such trash.

The sixth years had been posed with discussing the importance of separating wand magic theory from that of potions making. He'd discussed with them on numerous occasions how different the two were – drawing from two entirely different spheres of magical "influence". They seemed to think that "wand magics are intangible, while potions are tangible" and other such rubbish.

_Okay. Maybe not complete rubbish. But had they even been listening? It was so much more complicated than that! And_ _these were his NEWT students!_

He threw his quill down, red ink splattering across the paper he'd been so engrossed in. He almost panicked, seeing the thread of red dots that were now scattered across the paper, then decided he was too tired to care.

He leaned back in his chair, pressing the heels of his hands to his forehead, as he was wont to do when he was tired. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"Severus?"

His eyes snapped open, and he squinted in the low light, wondering when it'd gotten so dark, at the man who stood in his doorway.

"Yes?"

"Do you, um…have the…" the young man waved his hand in the air briefly before shoving it back in his pocket.

Severus rose from his desk and shot a disappointed look at the man who stood at the threshold of his office. "I think you're a little old to not be able to say it out loud, Lupin."

Lupin just shrugged.

Severus opened his cabinet and took a vial of freshly prepared potion from the rack. He walked around his desk, his robes billowing behind him. He thrust the squat vial forwards.

"Here."

Lupin took it and downed it in one gulp, wincing as he handed the empty vial back to the Potions Master, and wiped his mouth.

"Ugh. Can that stuff get more disgusting?"

Severus was momentarily unbalanced by this sudden venture into small talk. The last time, Lupin had just swallowed the potion, nodded a 'cheers' and left. He wasn't sure what to make of this.

He frowned. "It tastes like its ingredients. None of them were mint or bubblegum, I'm afraid."

Lupin's eyebrows retreated into his hairline. Then he let out a short bark of a laugh. "You made a joke."

Severus looked at him flatly. "It happens."

"Hah. So it does. Could've fooled me, Severus Snape," he said, and with a wink and a tug of his forelock, swept a bow at the potions master and left the room.

Severus stood there with the empty vial in his hands, and his right eyebrow piqued.

_What a strange, strange man._

# # # # #

Lily had brought Harry and Sirius with her to meet Lupin for lunch at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade.

He was already seated in the booth they used to constantly occupy as sixth and seventh years, and waved them over.

Sirius strode to the booth and slid in, as though no time at all had passed, while Lily grinned and walked slowly, her son toddling across the wooden floor.

"Wave, Harry, wave to Remus. Hello Remus!" She said in a pitched voice, and made waving motions with her hand that her son replicated with gusto.

When they reached the table, she sat and pulled him onto her lap. He stuck his thumb into his mouth and stared at the new face.

Remus leaned forward, resting his head on his hands. "Hello Harry," he said quietly, and grinned at the toddler, who grinned a mostly-toothless grin back at him, around his thumb. He giggled and then turned his body to hide his face in his mother's chest.

In between participation in peek-a-boo, Remus commented on the new teeth.

"Yeah, he cries something terrible when he's cutting a new tooth," Sirius replied.

Lily smiled as she listened to her friends discuss her son, while her son alternately buried his face in her blouse and quickly shot a glance out towards his new friend.

Sirius had been a godsend these last months – while not everyone can be independently wealthy and in charge of a family fortune forfeit because of past loyalties, she did cherish her always-on-call sitter. He spent his time doing research for the Ministry, on the condition that he made his own hours. He'd been strangely competent at rifling through dusty parchments for the Order, considering how little he'd studied in school. She remembered him telling her once that the library was "for prats" and she had replied with righteous indignation that she was most definitely not a prat, and if anyone in present company was, it was him. He had just laughed and threw his arm around her.

_That was when we were together_, she remembered. And her cheeks flushed a little bit, wondering if perhaps he had ulterior motives for being so…available.

She let her eyes linger on him, studying him. After the war, he'd gained his weight back, and even though his cheekbones were still prominent, she figured that at his age, it was a Black trait. His wavy black hair was pulled back in a queue, like it had always been when they were children.

Then she had a flash of another black-haired boy, and shook her head, trying to clear the picture from her mind.

They still chatted, the subject having moved from Harry's teeth to Remus' job, and they seemed unaware of her – or rather, comfortable enough around her that they didn't feel the need to include her exclusively in every conversation.

And as her son's head fell sleepily onto her chest, her mind wandered.

"_Really, Evans, you're a pretty girl, I'm the handsomest Gryffindor in our year," he grinned at her, his arm pinning her on one side, and his flunkies flanking her other side. She stood straight and looked him in the eye._

"_Black, the day I date you is the day I eat bugs."_

_He grinned, and conjured a jelly-filled dark chocolate beetle. He held it out to her in his free hand. "I know you like raspberry jam, Evans," he said silkily. She stared at the candy, lumbering slowly across his palm, and then at him._

_Then he kissed her, the inept kiss of a fourteen year old, and she shoved him off with a screech and ducked under his arm, accidentally smushing the jelly beetle in the grass._

_They started dating a week later._

She snapped out of the memory by being poked in the arm.

"Lil-y. This nice woman would like to take your order. I'm famished, so if you could light a fire under it, that would be fantastic," Sirius looked at her with a grin on his face.

"Oh. Oh. Just grilled cheese, please. With, um, tomato. Grilled cheese and tomato."

"Anythin' for the moppet?" The large curly-haired woman gestured to the boy asleep in her arms.

She shook her head.

"Alright then lads, food'll be right up."

The woman meandered away, stopping briefly at several tables to clap half-drunk men on the back with a raucous laugh.

Remus took a tentative sip of his fizzy drink, and then looked at Lily significantly, his head titled as though he was looking over the rims of glasses he didn't have.

She looked confused. "What?"

"I just. Wanted to know if you, if you…spoke to him."

She shot a look at Sirius, whose interest had been piqued by the apparent secrecy going on at the table.

"No. I haven't. Haven't had the chance."

"Oh."

"Who are we talking about?"

"No one," Remus and Lily replied in unison, which only made Sirius raise his eyebrow suspiciously.

"A no one that both of you know? And that Lily is supposed to talk to?"

They were both silent.

"You can't be serious. You can't really be keeping a secret from me while I sit _right here_ at this very table and you talk over me like I wasn't." He didn't sound angry, or put off, just mildly amused, and certain he would get an answer.

"It's nothing, Sirius. Remus should never have brought it up," she looked at the sandy-blond haired man significantly, her voice hardening with something akin to a threat.

This time both his eyebrows rose. "Oh ho ho! I can tell it's something I _really_ need to know, here. Spill. One or both of you spill it, and spill it now. Your fault for bringing it up, and I'm definitely not going to just sit here and pretend it didn't happen. Come on. Now, please," he said, making beckoning motions with his hands at both his booth-mate and the one sitting across from them.

Lily thinned her lips at Remus, who was very nonchalant about the whole thing.

"Lily, you can't keep it a secret forever."

"No, apparently I can't."

"I wasn't going to tell him."

"Thanks. Thanks a lot."

"Not my place to."

"Oh, so you bring it up while he sits right here to _make_ me? Jesus, Remus. That's lovely."

Remus simply shrugged and took another sip of his fizzy drink, which had been cycling in colour and now seemed to settle on a strange greenish-purple. "Public place. Figured it'd be better that way."

Sirius sat back in the booth, twisting his body so his back touched the wall, and crossed his arms across his chest.

"Lil-y."

She shot another look at Remus, and then turned her head to Sirius. "Nothing. Just an old friend, someone I thought I might be interested in, you know…"

"Seeing?" His voice remained noncommittal as to his feelings on the subject.

She shrugged. "It probably won't work out. Some people never grow up."

"I wouldn't say that. Some people just have a hard time expressing their feelings," Remus put in, his voice still calm as though he had no particular interest in the subject, but was simply stating fact.

She scoffed. "Oh, so suddenly you're his biggest fan?"

"I didn't say that. I said some people should be given a second chance."

"Some people _got _a second chance and shoved it in my _face_."

"I made things awkward. It just surprised me, is all."

Lily leaned back in the booth, her hand on her son's head, her fingers twirling in his hair while he slept. "I don't get it."

"Get what?" Black interjected, but his vocalization was ignored.

"All I'm saying is that maybe I feel a teensy bit guilty about our past, and maybe I'm trying to make amends. New job, starting over, shedding bad karma and all that. Maybe I'm trying to help a friend who needs a little push."

"Which friend, me or him?"

"I didn't say we were friends, Lily. Stop putting words in my mouth." This time Remus' voice became a little harsher.

"Oh, so this is all for _my _benefit."

"It is." His voice had lost the harsh edge, and he was calm again.

"Get what? Who are these 'some people'? Who are we talking about?" Again, he was ignored.

"And it doesn't bother you in the least?"

"I told you before, I wasn't crazy about it, but I've decided to give everyone, okay, not _everyone_, just some people, a second chance. And I'm just saying…you get awfully wound up about someone you say you couldn't care less about. I do care about you, and I want you to make sure you know what you want. If some people fit that description, then, because I love you, I'll support it."

She opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted.

"_Who are we TALKING about?!_" Sirius was louder this time, and startled their waitress, who'd come bearing their food on a tray.

"Chow," the woman said, and put their places in front of them and turned and left, plainly unwilling to get involved in any way with the emotionally charged conversation at the table.

"Just drop it, Sirius. It doesn't matter." She faced Remus. "Conversation over, okay? Let me eat my lunch." Then she faced Sirius. "When I'm ready to talk about it, I will, okay?"

"You're not keeping me in the dark about anything important, are you? I mean, if you are ready to start seeing someone, you know you have a babysitter whenever you need one. And I support you, one hundred and ten percent, Lils." He put his hand on her shoulder and his voice softened. "I want you to be happy. James would want you to be happy. You can't keep yourself locked away forever."

She almost cried at his tenderness, and leaned in to hug him, which he pulled her into, being careful not to jostle Harry.

"Thank you Sirius."

"Anytime, Gingersnap," he whispered, and placed a light kiss on her head, his lips destroying the perfect arrangement of her straight red locks.

_If only you knew what you were agreeing to, Sirius. If only you knew._

* * *

A/N: A big acknowledgment to Didodikali, in her immense wisdom and wit, from whom I shamelessly lifted Sirius's nickname for Lily. I just thought it was so darn cute, and since I love redheads so much, I am hoping one of my kids is the genetic throwback of the next generation that gets the flaming locks just so I can call her that when she's a kid. Also, once again (and it won't be the last time this shows up, since I've got a few 'cut scenes', if you will, gathered, and just waiting for their debut), this is not the chapter I intended to write. Not sure what, exactly, I _did _intend, but this just basically...dribbled from my brain to the computer screen, and I was left going "wait, what just happened here?!"

(And I'm trying really really hard to get to the place in the story where I can put on show for all to see the pure fluff scene I've written at random that involves egg and soldiers and breakfast at the Potter's...damn my inconstant muse!)


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: I hate bridge chapters. You know, all the stuff that has to take place between something you just did and the something you're trying to get to? Even worse is when a bridge chapter just goes berserk and requires being split in twain. Hopefully second half of this bit will be up tonight. I have about fifteen pages of miscellany just waiting to be spliced at the right moment, it's just taking some time to create those moments. Bear with me, folks :)

* * *

It had been three weeks since he threw her out of his classroom.

While the professors were cloistered in the castle during term, Lily found it frustrating that she could not simply orchestrate a chance meeting – she would have to go to Hogwarts purposely. And that gave her too much time to think, too much time to try and convince herself out of it.

She_ was_ sorry she'd jumped to conclusions. But she was also still frustrated (maybe even a bit angry) that he'd not given her a chance to explain herself. He'd jumped to conclusions too, and while that made her feel better about her own mistakes, it still all came down to the fact that she had tried to jump into a romance with someone she barely knew anymore.

People did it every day – they started new relationships with strangers.

But her and Severus were not strangers – they had a past that was rife with bad memories. Good ones too, for sure.

"_No, no, you can't just stab at it like some drunken harpy! Gods, Lily, who taught you how to do this?"_

"_Nobody, stupidface. I'm a Muggleborn, _remember_? I don't learn how to get into Snap-Pods when I'm five" she responded smartly, and shook her knife at him._

"_Three."_

"_Three?!"_

"_Three. They're great fun, and if you weren't brandishing that knife around, you'd have a better go of it. Here." He shook his head at her, as though at a child, rather than his peer, and grabbed her hand. He pried the knife out of her fingers and set it far away from the tray. He'd finally started to hit his growth spurt, and just shy of fourteen, he was beginning to be taller than her. He stood behind her, and took both her hands in his._

"_Now, watch."_

_He used her right hand to clutch the elongated mango-sized orange pod in her palm."_

"_Sev, I'm left handed."_

"_Oh. Sorry." He switched the pod into her left hand. Then he lifted her right and made her point a finger._

_He leaned in close, and whispered in her ear. "Now, slowly, slowly now, run your finger down that ridge there."_

_His hand still clutching hers, she reached for one of the darker orange ridges that striped the pod._

"_Yeah. Careful. Can't just poke at it. You see how well that worked."_

"_Har har."_

_She stroked the ridge once, twice._

"_Okay, now with just a little more pressure," he said, and leaned back from her body a little, almost removing his hands from hers._

_She bit her lip in concentration, and pressed just a little harder with her finger, peering close to the pod._

_And it split open with a loud pop!, surprising her to breathlessness and showering her and their lab table with pound coin sized green curls._

_He picked one out of her hair and smiled. "See?"_

_She smacked him on the arm. "You didn't tell me it was going to do that! I almost peed myself!"_

_That only got her a bemused cock of his eyebrow. "Not my fault you don't do the reading."_

"_I do too!"_

"_Obviously not for _this _assignment."_

"_I was busy."_

"_Mmm hmm," he said, clearly disbelieving._

_She picked up a green curl and threw it at his face._

She smiled at the memory. That was before awkward, before uncomfortable, when they were just Lily and Sev, before they started arguing.

And Remus! He'd been insufferable. As though a person other than herself could know what she wanted, what might make her happy, he had paraded her insecurities and half-truths in front of her like the Address to the Haggis at a Burns supper. Complete with pomp, circumstance, and a few dramatic reimaginings.

"_Oh Severus Snape! You brooding hook-nosed gorgeous" he coughed, upsetting his shrill imitation, "man!" He batted his eyes dramatically and threw a hand to his forehead. "Oh la!"_

"_This is not funny, Remus. Stop that."_

_Harry giggled from his highchair._

"_He thinks it's funny."_

"_He thinks everything's funny," she deadpanned. "I'll have you know that Sirius tramping around the place like a werewolf, which, were we not so close to the situation, we _might_ actually find funny, amuses the little snot to death. He even slathers at the mouth."_

"_Harry?" Remus looked slightly worried._

"_Sirius, you fool," she said, and reached out to smack him on the arm, which he gracefully avoided._

"_Oh, but I'm not finished," he said with a grin, and reached for her, pulling her to him as she yelped._

"_Oh Lily, Lily Evans, I've been in a deep obsession with you since we were children and I spied on you like a creep from behind a few bushes." He made a growling noise and made as though to bite her. "Be mine for all eternity!"_

_She couldn't help but laugh at his deep, gravelly voice which was more accurate than his impression of her had been. She pushed him away. "He's not a _vampire_, Remus."_

"_And you know that for sure, do you?"_

_She paused as if in sincere contemplation. "Reasonably sure, at any rate. Besides, we always sat outside when we were at school. He was in the sunlight a lot."_

"_I don't knowwww," Remus looked skeptical. "I seem to remember always finding you two in the _shade _rather than direct sunlight. I mean, Dumbledore did hire a werewolf to teach his students," he put both his hands on his chest proudly, " who's to say he doesn't have the same equal opportunity policy with other creatures of the night?"_

"_Stop that," she laughed, and reached out to smack him again, this time actually succeeding._

Sirius had brought his work "home", and agreed to sit for the tot while she used her much-needed day off from the Department of Muggle Relations to visit Hogwarts.

As she walked up the pathway to the castle, she was caught by a wind, which whipped her hair around her face, and she pulled her long navy peacoat tighter around her body, hugging her arms to her chest.

October had dawned, gloomy and windy on the highland moors, and she looked up, seeing that indeed, there would even be a bit of rain. She just hoped it didn't start before she got into the safety of indoors.

"Need a lift, miss?" A man with a black top hat, astride a thestral, appeared from the other direction, obviously intending on going down to the beginning of the pathway.

She peered at him, and then at the horse-creature, who was so bony as to certainly be completely uncomfortable to ride. It snorted, then focused a beady red eye on her.

"No, no thanks, I'm not going that way," she said, and gestured her gloved hand towards the castle gates.

"No worries, miss, Hesta here can take two. 'Course, she can't fly with two, no place for a person to sit but up here on her shoulders, and there ain't room for two, but she can go a good canter.

The man was slim and though he had white hair peeking out from under his hat, his face belied no great age. She felt he must have just gone prematurely white.

She walked over to the thestral, and held out her hand. The creature bared its teeth, pulling back its lips as it sniffed her, then pawed the ground a couple of times.

"See? She's alright, is Hesta," he assured her, and leaned over, extending a hand, and with surprising strength, pulled her up behind him. He was riding bareback, and she immediately regretted her decision as he veered the horse up the path, because the vertebrae ground under her very uncomfortably.

"You a student, miss? Don't recognize the likes of you."

"No no," she laughed. "It's been years since I was a student here. I'm afraid I don't know your name?"

"Ach! I'm Professor Ivesmole! Sorry about that, never introduced myself, did I?"

"And what do you teach?"

"Why, Care of Magical Creatures, of course," he said, smiling over his shoulder at her, and tipping his hat. "And you are?"

"Lily."

"What a lovely name, Lily. Your mum fond of lilies was she?"

"She's fond of flowers in general, sir. She named my sister Petunia."

He had a good chuckle at that, and they continued in amiable chatter until they reached the last set of gates before the castle. She could see the grounds were deserted in expectance of rain.

He helped her slide off the creature, who shook its back haunches, as though relieved to be without her extra weight.

"Thank you for the ride, Professor."

"Sorry I couldn't take you all the way up, but 'twould look strange to some to see a man floating in the air, and you as well! I never take them close to the school – unsettles some, it does."

She smiled, and reached out for the thestral, who'd decided that now she was off her back, wasn't so bad after all. It nuzzled her hand a bit, and she was mindful of its teeth, that could sever a finger if she wasn't careful.

Then he turned the thestral back towards the down slope of the path, and tipped his hat. "Good day, miss."

She nodded. "Good day, Professor."

And he rode away, waving to her behind him.

She shifted in her stance, rubbing her backside gingerly – it was rather painful to ride on that creature, but she was grateful for the swiftness, because she was sure it would begin to downpour any second.

Unfortunately, she thought a moment too late.

The sky opened up, and with a rumble and a crash, fat drops of water flew down hard, indenting the soft sod and making puddles in the grass.

She yelped in surprise and, with her hands above her head, a bad shield from the onrush of water, she ran over the gravel towards the school.

She grabbed the first door she could, the nearest, which opened into a stairwell. She looked both ways, and then ran upwards, meaning to find someplace to dry off.

And she collided mid-step with a man coming around the curve, descending in the stairwell.

"Would you _watch _it, you clumsy!" He shoved her away from him, and she looked up.

_Just the person I wanted to see. I guess._

* * *

A/N: Incidentally, both of the flashback scenes are inspired by things I was reminded of today whilst doing a cleanup of my eljay icons. The first, being my favorite Cary Grant movie, _Father Goose. _Strangely or not, this is not the last time that entirely comical romp of a film will be used for my purposes. Sorry Cary. If you're familiar with it, that first scene should remind you at least vaguely of the incident of fish-catching. Of course, being as I didn't want to imbue such a great amount of sexual tension just yet, it's not a true, complete homage. And the second (I hope) is definitely reminiscent of a particular re-enactment that takes place in the third season of _Angel_ ("Fredless", if you're curious), wherein Wesley and Cordelia pare down the intangible angst that is Buffy/Angel. That scene might be my absolute favourite scene in the entirety of the series. Well, almost. Numfar's Dance of Joy is pretty damn hi-larious. I'm finding that I love Remus to death, and can totally see him hamming it up, were he a less-troubled sort of man. And how about Sirius's werewolf impression? In my head, he's stalking about the kitchen with his hands up in some cross-imitation of Nosferatu and a T-Rex. Complete with the T-Rex walk. Of course, if your friends don't run around pretending to be dinosaurs every time anyone even mentions a line from _Jurassic Park_, you are perhaps not privy to the amusement which can, and does, ensue. In which case, I am sorry you've missed out.

Wow. Long author's note. Mostly to point out that I'm not all that creative here. Plotz.

(Oh, and for anyone thinking otherwise, the Snap-Pods are meant to be modeled on a plant that I do not know the name of which grows wild by my house...whose pods, much tinier, of course, must be gently touched just so to get them to pop like that. I honestly wasn't trying to be dirty there, but upon a re-read, can understand if you take it so. Jus' sayin' it's not, is all.)


	8. Chapter 8

"Lily!"

"Severus."

"What are you doing here?" Then he sniffed the air, ripe with warming wet wool. "And why are you drenched?"

"It started to rain."

"So it appears."

He crossed his arms over his chest. "What brings you to Hogwarts?"

She paused, considering him. He didn't appear to be in a particularly dreadful mood. It was merely his normal sarcasm and his normal disdain. "To see you, actually."

He raised an eyebrow, as though this idea had not occurred to him and he was honestly befuddled by such a request.

"I have a class."

"What, now?"

"In about six minutes."

"Well…could I…speak to you after your class?"

He studied her thoughtfully, his brow still furrowed. "I suppose."

She gave him a tight smile. "I'll just, erm," she hadn't thought he might be busy. She didn't know what to do. "I'll go see Remus, then."

"He has a double period with the sixth years, I'm afraid."

"Oh."

They stood in silence in the stairwell.

"You could, I suppose, ah, sit in my office. So long as you don't _touch_ anything."

She frowned, and almost shot off a retort regarding his need to threaten her like a child. But she bit her tongue. Someone had to be the bigger person here.

She forced a smile. "That would be grand, Sev."

If he was taken aback by her casual use of his name again, it only flickered for a moment, and it was not observed by Lily Potter.

He slid past her in the stairwell, and continued downwards, into the belly of the dungeons. He was about five steps past her when he turned around expectantly.

"Well? Are you coming?"

"Yeah. Yes. I'm coming."

She hadn't decided what would come next, and had hoped that it would come to her in that stairwell. But she was wet, and had started to smell the warm, wet wool smell herself, and couldn't wait to get someplace warm and _dry_.

Unfortunately, the dungeons were not known for either of these qualities.

She stepped into the Potions classroom and shivered.

He stepped behind her, and took a hold of her collar. "Well of course you're cold, you nit. Your coat is sopping wet. Here, take it off."

She shrugged her coat off, and he stepped back, allowing her to remove her arms.

He tossed it onto the coat rack that was previously unnoticed by the door, and then pulled out his wand and cast a Drying Charm on her.

He seemed to have forgotten that he was supposed to be angry with her.

"Thanks Sev."

"You do know you could have owled me, right? You didn't have to show up on my doorstep sopping wet. What, think I was going to slam the door in your face?"

She expelled a short laugh from her nostrils. "Yes, because I knew you were going to be in that stairwell at that very moment, and I had waited for just the right moment to be down poured upon."

He shrugged, and she hugged her arms to her chest, rubbing them vigorously.

"Still cold?"

She nodded. "Don't you get cold down here? I mean, it's damp and dark and…not pleasant at all."

"It has its charms." Then he looked annoyed that she was still rubbing her arms.

"Here," he said, and walked towards her, and wrapped his arms around her. "Merlin's beard, Lily, but you'd think you didn't have enough sense to come out of the rain nor to care you didn't catch pneumonia once you got back in."

She let him hold her for a few seconds, arms still crossed on her chest, but she relaxed, her cheek pressed against him. "You could have just cast a Warming Charm on me," she said quietly.

He stepped away from her abruptly. "Well, you could have too. You were always better at Charms."

They stood three feet apart; an awkward silence fell between them.

"My class will be arriving any minute now. Ah, here's my office," he walked to the other side of the room, and swung open the door, letting her enter first. "Tea is over there. Just, erm, help yourself."

And he backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

She turned to face the door, and she heard the telltale sound of voices, the scraping of chairs, the thunk! of textbooks. She heard his voice instruct them to "settle down" and "stop that right now you mischievous little Gryffindor!"

Then the sounds faded from her attentions, and with another rub of her arms, she pulled her wand from her pocket and cast the Warming Charm, feeling it start at her toes and tingle its way up her body. She stood looking around for a few minutes at the dingy office.

There were books and bottles on every surface, sometimes held precariously on an edge by nothing more than a few stout cobwebs.

There were surfaces that were orderly, and she could tell which parts of the office he'd really taken for his own versus the bits he hadn't sorted out yet. The bookshelves were black, but those that hadn't been wiped down were a strange brownish-grey under the thick coating of dust.

She approached the nearest clean bookshelf – books she recognized from his rooms when they were young adorned the shelves. A copy of _Advanced Potions Making_, as well as all the rest of the required reading from every year at Hogwarts, plus _A Quick and Simple Guide to Your Magical Herbs_, _Brewing Cure-All Antidotes, _and sandwiched between _Luck, Love, and Other Experiments of Fate_ and _Knowing Your Roots_ was _Moste Potente Potions_. She frowned. She remembered on more than one occasion getting into an argument when he was reading it in the library. Slughorn admired his skill, and was more than happy to sign permission slips for the Restricted Section for his favorites. She'd argued that it was Dark magic, and that he should leave well enough alone, whereas he felt it was merely good research to know what was contained within its leaves.

Her eyes scanned the rest of the room. His desk was overlarge and covered with beakers and vials and bits of drying herbs. It seemed, as she let her eyes wander, that his desk was the messiest of the areas he'd claimed.

She walked around it and sat down in the chair, a wooden contraption with leather cushioning that squeaked horribly when she sat down in it, almost immediately falling backwards on the weakened hinges.

She scanned the papers on the desk, noting red ink all over an essay with a notation "please do attempt to read the text – if you're illiterate, do speak up" that made her laugh out loud despite its cruelty. She could hear him saying it to himself as he wrote it, most certainly with a smile on his face. She remembered him helping another Slytherin with Potions one afternoon when they were supposed to meet to do their lab work, and he'd done nothing but sarcastically harp on the poor boy the entire time. She'd sat in the back of the classroom and pretended to read her text while he made all sorts of sounds of disbelief when the student, only a year younger, seemed unable to grasp what he kept calling 'simple concepts'.

She smiled at that memory, thinking that it was actually rather appropriate he was a teacher. He'd gotten up and threw his hands into the air and paced in front of the boy, hands behind his back, shaking his head, but eventually after a bit of drilling that was obviously tiding over from an earlier session, the kid seemed to have caught on, and he actually complimented him – "_you're not completely hopeless after all, Jarwen_".

She leaned forward and peeled up that essay, looking perhaps to see his notes on the ones beneath it, and a tiny little voice in the back of her head said it was rude to go rifling through someone's things, but she just ignored it pointedly as though her conscience had been silent the whole time.

A few sheaves in, and a few chuckles later, she came upon the very thing she shouldn't've – the thing her conscience warned her about.

_Dear Lily,_

was all she saw before she sat back, letting the papers fall back into place.

She frowned in thought, curiosity burning at her.

"It does have _my _name on it," she said quietly to herself.

_Oh, and that makes it okay to read something that isn't yours? He didn't _give _it to you, you know._

"Tea. Help myself to some tea, he said," she stood abruptly and went over to the small clearing on the buffet, under the cabinet, where there was a silver platter tea service with three small china cups, one with a chip in the lip. One had faint brown lines on the inside, and still had the dregs of tea leaves in the bottom, whereas the others looked clean, but untouched.

She opened one china jar and spooned leaves into her cup. Then she boiled water with a flick of her wand added it to the cup. She was amused, for a moment, that he didn't use tea bags, but loose leaves. She imagined that in his strange ideals of romanticizing the past, that leaves were just "better" than teabags.

She stirred her cup, the water darkening as the tea leaves released their tannins into the hot water.

She took a sip, the roof of her mouth smarting from the hot liquid, and then just stood, leaning her back to the buffet, staring at the desk.

_Curiosity killed the cat!_

She pondered it for a few moments before deciding to become very interested in a shelf by the door full of tiny stoppered vials.

She held her teacup cradled in one hand while she turned each of the vials, peering at the precise labels.

"Essence of Warty Toad – gross, how does one get an _essence_ of a toad?" She moved to the next vial, carefully not disturbing their order as her fingers brushed them. "Purified Rain Water, Stardust," she shook the vial and watched the glittery dust cling to the sides. "Spider Legs, Eyes of Newt…" She said each thing out loud, and they became less and less interesting, going from strange yet revolting essences of things she would rather not question to the more mundane dried herbs, the bottles getting larger as she reached things like "Powdered Toadstool" and "Twice Dug WormSoil".

Her attention no longer piqued by the vials, she turned back again to face the desk.

_Don't do it. It's his personal stuff. You know he was always sensitive about his personal stuff. And he said not to touch anything! You're touching everything!_

She bit her lip.

And then apparently decided to risk the cat, and sat back down at his desk.

She peeled the papers back very carefully, so she could replace them as though she hadn't seen a thing.

_Dear Lily,_

_I'm sorry about the other day._

_I did not expect you to come see me – not after how we left things, our argument at the meeting. I pushed you away, which is something I've gotten rather good at, haven't I?_

_I told you how I felt, and I probably shouldn't have. I kept it to myself for years, and I'm sorry that I picked that moment to spill it onto your shoulders. I know you still grieve for him –__and I should have kept it to myself._

_But then you kissed me. I've been waiting for that kiss since I was nine years old._

_But, I'm also afraid to inform you, I still can't forgive certain aspects of our past, just as I am sure you cannot. Watching you go after Remus, and trying to make up some excuse about why you were there with me, it was painful to watch, to say the least. I could tell that you were embarrassed, shamed, maybe, that you'd done it, even worse that you'd been caught. So I made up an excuse for you, and made you leave so that you didn't have to explain yourself to your friends._

_I know they don't like me, that their opinion means the world to you. So I would rather you keep what you have than try to chase after something that would leave you bereft. As much as I dislike their company myself, I know you don't, and I want you to be happy. Even if it's not with me._

_Always,_

_Sev._

She swallowed hard, staring at the letter.

She felt guilty that he was apologizing, when just before she came here she'd been thinking that that was what she had been there to get.

"_No, you have some things to apologize for too."_

"_Like what, Remus?"_

"_Lily, you said he said he loved you. At least say you're sorry for leading him on if you don't want it."_

"_Who said I didn't want it?"_

"_Well, Lily, you have to decide what you _do _want. I may not like him much, but it's still dreadfully unfair to lead him around by the nose – to do that to anyone."_

"_I don't know what I want." She sat down at the kitchen table hard, and looked up at him. "I know I want us to be friends again, at least. I know he's a good person – a good person who just got mixed up in the wrong things. We were young, and he's different now – he's changed. Or, well, he's not that horrible person that he became, that fought against us in the war. But I don't know him anymore. You saw how cold he was to me when I tried to explain…"_

"_You just need to try harder."_

"_But how much harder is enough? Or too much? The last thing I need is to get involved with someone who constantly needs reassuring that I want this to work. He's always been so egotistic when it comes to his intelligence, but never much at all when it came to people. I think he was always surprised that we were friends at all."_

_Remus pulled over a chair to sit in front of her and took her by the shoulders. "Lily, he was a difficult person – _is _a difficult person to get to know. And you're friendly and open and kind – from what you've told me, I don't imagine that's something he ever got a lot of. He's probably damn suspicious of it when it does present itself and pushes it away, afraid that it's a lie."_

_She smiled. "How do you know all this?"_

_He dropped his arms from hers. "It was me, a little bit."_

"_You?"_

"_Yeah. James and Sirius were the most popular in our year, and I was a loner. By choice. And they…never cared that I tried to be antisocial – they just pretended like I always said 'yes' and dragged me with them everywhere. It took me almost two years before I really let them in, and then I was sure they would drop me. But they didn't – they became Animagi for me. I didn't know what it was like to have friends like that, and it was a wonderful feeling to know that someone liked me that much to keep such a secret for me. Even to be a little mischievous with me, when I clearly didn't want to have fun of any sort."_

_Lily smiled. "James always spoke so highly of you – said you were the sensible one that kept them from killing themselves with their stupidity."_

_He smiled back at her. "Yeah, someone had to corral them once in awhile. But they opened me up to the world, made me see that there were people in it that could appreciate who I was – Severus had you, but the way everyone else was with you, I'm sure he felt like he could lose you at any moment."_

"_What do you mean, 'the way everyone else was' with me?"_

"_James and Sirius flirted prodigiously with you. You had other friends, girls and boys both. He only had you. I never saw anyone else be friendly with him."_

"_What about those Death Eater wannabes?"_

"_Maybe that's why he joined them. They gave him something he desperately wanted, even if he already had it. Even if, deep down, he knew they were using him to some end or another."_

She slid the letter back into its place, tilting it just so, and then laying the other sheets on top of it.

"Find what you were looking for?"

He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed, but no sign of amused sarcasm on his face.

She stood up quickly from his desk.

"Severus."

"Get out."

"But."

"Get. Out."

"Severus, let me explain!"

He stalked towards her, his face dark and contorted. "What did I say?! Leave!"

She flicked her wand and the door slammed shut behind them. "No! Not until you've _listened _to me!"

"What could you _possibly_ have to say?!"

"That I'm sorry I walked away! I'm sorry you wouldn't let me explain myself the other day! I don't just kiss people without meaning! I loved you once, and I want the chance to try and have that again!"

"You just…what?"

"You heard me."

"What drivel are you talking? What do you mean you loved me once?"

"Exactly what I said. We were in fourth year, and I realized I had feelings for you, but then you started hanging out with all those boys practicing Dark magics, and I tried to pull you out of it, tried to prove to you that you meant something to me, that I cared what happened for you, and you..."

This time it was her words interrupted. Her took her face in his hands and kissed her, harshly, as though it was important and they hadn't much time. It lasted only a moment, and then his grip on her loosened, and he pulled away a little, and then kissed her again, softly, and she reached for him, allowing him to place gentle kisses on her lips.

He pulled away and leaned his forehead against hers, her face still in his hands. "I've wanted to do that for years," he said quietly.

She smiled. "Wasting time, aren't we?"

And she slid her arms into his robes and pulled herself to him, and one of his hands was around her waist, the other in her hair, clinging to her as though she was a dream that might disappear.

* * *

A/N: Had to edit this one belatedly - uploaded the pre-triple-checked document by mistake. Argh. Anyway. Letter was better, but FFNet won't save my text with strikethroughs - which I had put in to the original document to show what he was really thinking versus what he was allowing to be seen. Anywho. As keaneplay put it, it was "make or break" time here. And I wouldn't be writing this if I wasn't a big fine fan of "make". Hope you enjoyed. Next couple of chapters hopefully out this weekend. And I will likely have to raise the rating soonish, because future chapters have a bit of really bad language in them. Eesh.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: This is a _really_ short chapter, but I liked the ending. Of course, by the time you finish this, the next one will be up, but I felt it was more benefiting a chapter-ending than just a section ending. Also, decided to up the rating to "M" because of the language. I hope this doesn't scare people away…

* * *

"What are you so happy about?"

Lily looked at Sirius, sitting on her couch, arm across the back, one leg crossed over the other. She continued to arrange the two place settings.

"What do you mean?"

"What do you mean what do I mean? You're humming. Cheerful humming. And you have the most god-awful grin on your face."

She paused, and straightened a butter knife, and stood, one plate still in her hands. "Sorry."

He smiled. "Nothing to be sorry about! Who is he?"

She pressed her lips together. "Would you mind if I didn't say just yet? Don't want to jinx it."

"Is it the same someone Remus was encouraging you about in the Three Broomsticks the other week?"

She stared at him, but then nodded her head curtly. "Mm-hmm."

"I don't know why you look so petrified. I said I was happy for you – I don't blame you for wanting to get on with your life. I mean," he lifted his hand that had been on his lap and examined his fingernails. "I mean, I won't lie, a little part of me kinda wishes it was me you were so happy about…"

"Sirius."

He shrugged and smiled at her. "My chance came and went, I know. I'm not going to dwell on it." He stood up from the couch and came into the little kitchen, where the small table sat. He leaned on the jamb of the door-less entryway between the rooms. "But that doesn't mean I don't still love you as a friend, and I care about your happiness. This guy makes you happy. Great." He suddenly stood up straight, concern on his face. "He _is _a wizard, right? I mean, you being in that Muggle Relations department…"

"Sirius Black!" She looked shocked, her hands on her hips, still holding a plate in one hand, and a butter knife in the other.

"What?"

"Are you saying that I shouldn't date a muggle?"

"No, no, not at all! But he's…he's not, is he?"

"You're lucky I know you don't mean what other people would think you meant. Because I know you're better than that family of yours."

"Lily, of course not! That's not what I meant! I just…meant that it would be kind of difficult to talk about your life at _all_, or…your husband, or…you know, without lying through your teeth. That's all I meant."

She relaxed and smiled at him. "I know. I know you're better than them. But no, he's not a muggle. He is a wizard."

Sirius leaned back against the jamb. "Do I…know him?"

She looked up at him, her head still bent. "Um. Yeah. Yeah, you know him."

He smiled, looking interested. "How _well _do I know him?"

She considered her response. "Not well. Not well at all. Hardly know him, really. Know _of _him, I'm sure. But _know _him, not so much, no," she said, straightening the tablecloth and nodding her head back and forth as she spoke.

"Lil-y. Who _is _this guy? The suspense is _killing_ me!" He held his hands up like claws and threw his head back with a laugh.

She stepped forward and put her hands on his chest and started marching him backwards.

"Well you'll just have to stay in suspense just a little longer. He's supposed to be here at half-past, and I _don't_ want you here when he is."

"What, think we won't get along? I don't understand what your problem is," he said, laughing as he was pushed backwards.

Then the doorbell rang.

She dropped her hands from Sirius's chest, her eyes wide. She didn't speak for a full ten seconds while her heart threatened to burst from her chest.

"Oh. Shit."

He looked amused. "Language, my girl! Language! Can't be throwing that around when you've got a young one!" He threw out an arm, gesturing to Harry, who was sleeping rather contentedly in his playpen in the living room. Then he turned quickly on his heel. "Aren't you going to answer the door? No? Let me do the honors!"

"Sirius! No!"

He laughed again. "Lily, what _is _your problem? Can't leave the poor bloke standing on the front step like some sort of vagabond!" He reached for the door handle, turning it as he spoke.

"Hey, nice to meet you, Lily's told me so little…"

His voice stopped abruptly taking in the man who stood there, in black trousers and a white oxford shirt and green velveteen robes.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."


	10. Chapter 10

"You've got to be _fucking kidding me_!" He repeated, shock having not loosened his hand from the door, and the man on the front step suddenly looked awkward holding a small clutch of stargazer lilies.

There was silence. No one could find words. And then all of them found them at once.

"Black."

"Sirius!"

"Lily!" Still not letting go of the door, Sirius turned to face her, and pointed with his free hand at Severus. "Please tell me you're kidding. _Please_."

"Sirius…"

"You're not kidding me? You're fucking INSANE! Snivellus?! Snape the pet of the Dark Lord?! Lily, you've taken a total leap from your senses! Don't you remember how this bastard treated us?! Treated James?! Treated _you_?!"

Severus opened his mouth to argue, but saw Lily go to him.

She rushed towards him, reaching out a hand to touch his arm. "Sirius, please. Don't. I can explain."

He was wide-eyed staring at her. He shrugged off her touch. "I…I can't hear this right now." And he disapparated with a crack!

She stared at the place where he had been, looking extremely downtrodden.

Severus still stood on the front step, unsure of what to say.

"Well. That's not how I imagined it going."

She continued to stare at the floor. "Me neither. I…I wanted to tell him. I didn't want him to find out…like this."

"Actually, I meant I expected to at least get into an argument and toss a few jinxes and hexes around. I think it went rather well."

"Well?!" She looked at him, tears forming in her eyes. "_Well_?! Severus! What if he never speaks to me again?!"

He had the grace to look slightly ashamed – he knew it hadn't gone well for _her_. He shifted his feet, looking at the ground, completely unsure of what to do. Then he looked up, and she was still staring at the floor, then she turned around, and went back into the house.

He went in after her, letting the door swing shut behind him. He tossed his flowers on the couch, and took three large strides to reach her before she reached the kitchen, grabbing her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides.

"Lily, Lily, stop."

"Let me go!"

"No. Stop. Stop." He said the last two words softly, his lips near her ear.

"Severus, he's never going to speak to me again. He hates me right now, I know it. I kept us a secret from him, and…" She started to cry, her body sagging in his arms. He turned her around to face him, and she laid her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair, and let her cry. He was even less fond of Black than he had been of James, but he knew how important he was to her. It took all his strength and willpower to bite his tongue, to tell her that if he was being such a bastard now, it was only showing his true colors.

_So this is what it's like to be in love._

# # # # #

When she'd dried her tears, she found she had lost her appetite.

"Um. Would you mind if we…if we…"

"Raincheck?"

"Yeah."

He did mind. He hated that Black ruined their night. Hated that he had made her cry.

"No. Not at all. Some…other time."

She leaned up and gave him a quick peck on the lips. "Thank you."

"So I'll just," he thumbed towards the door. It was going to be a long walk in the dark up to the castle, without the elation he had expected to quicken his steps.

He turned to leave, intending to disapparate from the darkened street rather than from her living room.

"Sev."

He faced her. "Hmm?"

"Thank you."

"You said that."

"No, I mean…for not fighting."

He gave her a sad smile. "All for you. Always," he said quietly.

She walked to him then and gave him a proper kiss, her fingers clutching his shirt and robes. He returned it with fervor, trying to tell her how much he didn't want to leave.

And then he wondered if she could read minds.

She broke the kiss and pulled away, looking down. "You, um. Are you sure you want to leave?" She looked up at him, curious.

"I thought you wanted me to."

She took his hand and led him into the kitchen, and bade him sit. Then she left the room. He heard her doing something in the living room, and then her footfall on the stairs.

She was gone for several minutes, and then he heard her on the stairs again, and she poked her head in the kitchen.

"Want to make out on the couch?" She grinned. "I put the kid to bed. No one to disturb us."

He tried not to look too confused. Ten minutes ago she had been weeping into his shirt.

"Lily," he said, and stood. "I don't…are you okay? I mean…"

The grin fell from her face, and she walked around the corner to stand against the jamb, one foot crossed over the other, arms crossed across her chest, and he had to shake away a flash of her in that exact same position, in her black and grey school uniform. She seemed to be speaking to no one but herself, her voice projected at the floor

"I spend so much time worrying about other people. Worried about what they want. I want to worry about what _I _want."

There was silence between them. And then Severus spoke hesitatingly.

"And you want…to make out on your couch like a couple of teenagers?" He looked confused and even a little repulsed. He felt juvenile thinking about it, despite the flush that crept up his chest and neck, threatening to colour his face.

She looked up at him, half a smile and half question. "Yeah?"

He just stared at her. "Um."

She grinned, and stepped forward, grabbing his hand, and pulling him into the living room. She pushed him into a sitting position on the couch, and straddled his lap, leaning in for a kiss, her hands pressed against his chest.

At first he looked shocked, and then he gave up on coherent thoughts.

* * *

A/N: _And she began to realize that when he said 'as you wish' what he meant was 'I love you'._

Another short one, I know. Don't worry. Many of the ones to come are almost too long. Sirius is so hard to write in this setting – as a young man, I feel he's still angry about so many things – and he doesn't have the benefit of years in Azkaban to think about his life. They're all _so young_, and yet incredibly mature. But I figure that sometimes age wins out, and maturity is thrown out the window. I'm having a hard time deciding how Sirius takes to this relationship as it develops – alas, I don't think he ever truly accepts Severus, but what will that mean for his relationship with Lily?

Also, I hope you don't think I'm moving too fast – or making Lily seem inconstant. I mean, she is, but not in a flippant or cruel way. The girl has a lot on her mind, a lot going on in her life. She's constantly faced with these ultimatums, these decisions that will entirely change how people see her. And no one should have to do that so regularly.

Reviews, please :)


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: If you're reading, please be kind enough to leave a review. I'm getting into unfamiliar territory here, and I want to make sure I'm not killing characterizations and that how I'm justifying them makes sense to you, the readers. We're going to be delving into the arena of Issues with a capital "I", and alas, it's not going to be pretty.

Of course, to placate you for the coming storm, this chapter is mostly fluff. Well. Sorta.

* * *

Severus stroked her shoulder with his thumb, his other hand laced with hers as it lay on his chest.

He had so many things he wanted to say, but could not form the words.

She pressed her lips together in thought, and furrowed her brow, and he watched her, suddenly worried.

"Lily?"

"Hmm?" She didn't look at him, just stared at their entwined fingers.

"Do you…" he swallowed once, gathering his courage to finish his question. "Do you…_regret_…this?"

She looked up at him then, taking in his face, the fear pulling at his mouth, making his jaw tense, his pupils contracting even in the semidarkness.

"Sev, no," she said quietly, and he let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. She extricated her hand from his, and reached up to lay her fingers on his jaw. She ran her thumb over his lips, and he kissed it gently.

"It's just…" She looked away, her hand dropping from his face, back to lay her palm on his chest. He laid his hand over hers, never stopping his gentle thumb-stroke on her shoulder.

"Just?"

She swallowed. "I don't know…I don't know what is going on in my life. It feels like…chaos. My husband's best friend thinks I'm dishonoring his memory by _dating_ the enemy. I can't imagine of what he'd think if he found out I was _sleeping_ with you too."

"Am I the enemy?"

"You are to him."

"And you? We never…talk about it."

"And I don't want to. I know enough. I know all I need to know."

"All you need to know?"

"That you're here with me. That I…I care for you."

It wasn't like he planned this. It wasn't like he planned to seduce the widow of his childhood rival and end up in her bed. Or well, was seduced into her bed. He wasn't sure who had done what.

_The bed she once shared with James_, a little voice told him, and he shuddered, because it drove home the realization that she couldn't possibly be in love with him right now. And he felt guilty. Guilty that he was happy, that he had finally gotten what he had wanted for years, and he shouldn't've. James shouldn't've died, and Severus shouldn't be in bed with his wife.

_Widow._

She looked up at him again when he had shuddered, worry plain on her face. And there was her own brand of guilt there too.

It wasn't like she had planned this. It wasn't like she had planned to fall into bed with a man who had once been a boy that she had once cared for deeply. It wasn't that simple – they hadn't been close for years, since before they left Hogwarts, but somehow it had happened. He was there, and the way he looked at her. She thought she needed that. No, she did. She needed _someone_ to be close to her, to hold her and tell her it would be alright. And he had done that.

And then she had kissed him. Fingers in his hair, pulling him towards her kissed him. He responded in kind for a precious few minutes before he could think clearly enough to speak.

"_Lily, what…?"_

_He pulled back from her, surprised being the least of the emotions that played across his face._

_She felt like she was a schoolgirl again, flush creeping up to her hairline. Young though she was, she had a life already begun, a family, and she felt she must be much too mature to blush at the thought of kissing…like this. Someone…kissing someone besides him…(James!)…like this._

_She hung her head, and slid off his lap, her fingers touching her swollen lips._

"_I'm sorry, Sev."_

_He gaped at her, trying to decide what to say. "No, I mean," he began, stumbling over his normally very finely tuned words. "Lily, I…I…I'm just…a bit confused. Ten minutes ago you were crying into my shirt, and now…now I think you just popped one of my buttons." He looked down, and fingered the bit of thread that was all which remained. "Are you…okay?"_

_She let a smile linger, his thoughtfulness surprised her. He had become such a harsh man, so different from the boy who was idealistic in their youth despite the evils which dogged him. And yet, here he was. Some stranger, some person different than both Sev-the-boy and Severus-the-man that she had come to know. He was, in erratic turns, cruel to her and yet she watched his barriers break down before her when he said he loved her. And then moments later, he'd pushed her away. She couldn't predict him. She didn't know him. And then, inevitably, the real world returned to the forefront of her mind. Here, and now. She was throwing herself at him. What was she thinking?_

_He watched her, deep in her thoughts. He had no idea what she was thinking. She was so different now – war and the loss of her husband had sobered her from the fiery girl he used to know. Then he saw it dawn on her, the reality of their lives, and knew how strange that moment had been. After so much pain, so much fighting, and then…this. Too much, too fast._

_He rose from the couch._

"_I um, I should go."_

_Lily stood and plastered on a smile. "Thanks for…for coming. Even if, um," she gestured to the kitchen where the empty plates still sat._

_He nodded. "Not a problem."_

_She walked just behind him to the door, and he felt strangely like this was one of life's moments, the important ones, where you could keep going and never know you missed it, or you could seize it and make the most of it. He was never one for seizing anything, but the prickle of almosts and not-quites gave him courage he never knew he had._

_He opened the door, and she held it open behind him, and he was facing out, he was going to leave, but he turned back to look at her, one last time._

_That look lingered longer than it should have, and he stepped forward and took her face in his hands, and pressed his lips to hers. Her response was almost immediate, and he was pulled back inside, the door was slammed behind him, and…_

He blushed at the memory of their vehement clawing at each other, at how they stumbled up the stairs, giggling and kissing and groping; how he pinned her against her bedroom door, and held her hips in his hands, pulling her to him, kissing her like he had never kissed anyone before. And her hands pulling up his shirt, seeking flesh, and…

_She slammed against the door, thinking vaguely that her coccyx would definitely be taking that up with her later. His hands held her waist, and she wasn't sure if it was him pressed into her, or her pulling his body into her, their hips settling into each other's shapes._

_She didn't have coherent thoughts, just wordless wants and needs, and this was what she wanted, this was what she needed…_

"Sev?"

"Yes?"

She noted his voice was stronger, more solid, than the whispered tone he'd had earlier. She wasn't sure if that meant he was pulling away from her. She hardly knew him anymore.

"Would you hate me if…if I asked that you didn't tell anyone? I mean…I'm not ready to…to tell anyone."

He turned his head and kissed her hair.

"No, Lily. Never."

And they fell asleep in each other's arms, everything ventured, but unsure of what they had gained.

# # # # #

When she awoke, she was alone. She stretched her hand out, touching the side of the bed where he had been.

And her fingers felt the edge of paper.

She pulled it towards her and sat up in bed, pulling her knees to her chest.

_L, _

_You're so beautiful when you sleep, I couldn't bear to wake you. "Some people" have jobs they need to show up for occasionally._

She laughed a little, remembering the conversation she'd related about Lupin and the Three Broomsticks, realizing it was only yesterday, while they were making dinner plans, that she'd told him. Yesterday seemed so long ago. She was caught, for a moment, in thinking of Sirius, of how he'd reacted, just disapparating out of her home. She would have to speak to him. But…what would she say?

Her eyes went back to the note.

_I kissed the sleeping beauty before I left – I hope she had good dreams._

_Send me an owl when you're awake – maybe we can have lunch?_

_S._

She smiled, her hand over her mouth. She leaned over the bed and pulled open the drawer of the bedside table, where a pad of paper and three pens, among other strange and varied treasures, lay. She peeled off the top sheet, and grabbed a blue ballpoint.

_Sev,_

_Meet you in your office – I'll bring a picnic lunch for two. Second time's the charm?_

_Lily._

Then she whistled sharply, and a grey and brown screech owl swooped into her window.

"Heya Orestes," she greeted the bird and buried her fingers in his chest, giving him a little scratch, and the owl hooted happily and closed his eyes for a moment before proceeding to attempt to nip her fingers. "Take this to Hogwarts, to Professor Snape."

She used a bit of red ribbon to tie the note haphazardly to the owl's foot, ripping a hole in the folded paper to thread the ribbon through. The owl shook his foot, as though to make sure the note was secure, before reaching forward to nip her fingers, looking for a treat.

"Sorry buddy. I'll give you something when you get back."

Luckily he had apparently not expected much, and spread his wings, lifting off from her bed, leaving three small downy feathers to float back to her coverlet.

She picked one up and twirled it in her fingers, the faint spots blurring into stripes as it spun.

# # # # #

He closed the door to his office, in an attempt to discourage intruders, dropping the latch before he walked away.

He sat down in his chair, only to be joined there by an overzealous redhead, who had forgotten she was there to share a meal, and instead threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

His hand on her thigh, he pulled her closer into him, leaning back in his chair. His other hand was wrapped in her hair, and she felt a chill go down her back at his fingers lightly running over her scalp, and leaned in a little more, squashing her breasts against him, her hands linked and dangling over the back of his chair.

When they came up for air, he was actually _smiling_.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. I'm just wondering when I'm going to wake up," he chuckled. "The last eighteen hours have been rather…surreal."

She smiled, and used two fingers to sweep a few errant threads of hair that had escaped his ribbon off his face. "It's been so long since I've seen you smile. I forgot how it lights up your face," she said softly, and stroked his cheek.

"Kiss me again," he said with a grin, and she obliged, reaching behind him to untie his hair, and thread her fingers into the thin, silky tresses.

# # # # #

"No, really, you have to go, I have a _class_!" He laughed, trying to shove her out the door, picnic basket on her arm, but she kept turning around and kissing him, which did wonders to distract him, and only ensured to keep her on the wrong side of the threshold.

"Lil-y! They'll be here any minute!" He hissed, cocking his head to listen for voices in the stairwell.

She kissed him again, and then reached around and got a good handful of his butt.

"Lily!" He actually looked embarrassed, color flushing his cheeks.

She grinned. "I've always wanted to do that," she said with a wink, and skipped out of the room, basket swinging as she skipped up the steps.

He smoothed his rumpled robes and shirt, and re-buttoned the few buttons she'd undone, and then with a swift flick of his fingers, buttoned his robes over his shirt. He ran his fingers into his hair, and headed back for his office, in an attempt to reorder himself before he was faced with students.

They hadn't eaten a morsel.

His stomach gurgled and he smiled, thinking that this was the second time he'd exchanged food for…well.

He thought of her mother, prodding him that he was too skinny when they were young. If only he could have had the excuse then that he did now.

* * *

A/N: There is some great fanart out there - besides the one by Didodikali I mentioned earlier that inspired the storyline which would hopefully produce "Sev Lite" (thus the laughing - I mean, he's what, 22/23? I think he's still young enough to remember what laughter was), there is a really great one by pojypojy of Lily's parents fawning over Severus...her father claiming he's never going to get a girl if he doesn't cut his hair, and her mother insisting he's far too skinny, would he like a sandwich or some cake? It's hilarious and lovely and so the sort of parents I imagined Lily to have.

Also, because JKR never gave me satisfactory information to justify the deaths of her parents, I've taken one more artistic whim with her world and kept them alive. I mean, if Lily gets to live, why not her parents? So there. Of course, next we leave the Land of Fluff and enter the Land of Those Gaps In Our Shared History. Eesh.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: I'm not pulling a reverse Disney here – but we had to have SOME sort of plot besides just theirs. And it is an excellent vehicle for a conversation that I wasn't sure they were going to have – I was going to do it entirely in flashbacks during scenes Lily wasn't even in. But I think it's better this way. Go angst!

Also, this is the toddler!Harry scene that got me writing the wee bloke. Hee.

* * *

It was the weekend – he usually woke up on the weekend and graded the papers due from the day before. He was up with the sunrise, and made himself tea, and sat in his black cotton housecoat and pajamas, destroying the spirits of uppity young witches and wizards who were sure they knew better than he did.

He attributed it to his youth – they didn't respect him because he was too young, not forceful enough with them.

Next year would be different. Next year he would make an impression on the first years – show them that his classroom was a place to be in awe of the wonders of their gifts, not a den for spitballs and charmed flying notes.

He opened his eyes, and it was past sunrise. And he wasn't in his own bed. One arm draped over his face, blocking out the sun, he inhaled deeply. Then he turned his head, and saw the pillow next to him was empty.

He swung his legs over off the edge of the bed, found his loose-fitting sleeping trousers, and grabbed a green t-shirt off of the bedpost. He pulled it on with a yawn and ran his fingers into his hair. He tousled it, trying to jolt himself awake. He was only rewarded with another yawn.

He walked down the stairs, and heard noise coming from the kitchen – a radio, singing, the sound and smell of frying food, a banging noise.

He walked into the kitchen.

"Morning."

She turned to look at him, and flipped an egg. "Morning sleepyhead. You want breakfast?"

"Sure, if you're offering."

"Yeah," she smiled, and gestured with her spatula for him to sit at the table.

The banging noise was coming from her son, who sat in his booster seat on the side of the table opposite him. He was making noise by smacking his spoon against the table, his cup, the sides of his booster seat. Lily seemed completely oblivious to his noise. Severus just narrowed his eyes. Far too much noise this early in the morning.

Severus frowned at the plate she handed to him, poking the bits of bread that had…jam…hats.

"What the…?"

"Soldiers! Didn't you ever eat egg and soldiers as a kid?"

His raised eyebrow indicated otherwise.

She laughed, and pointed her spatula at her son, who was engrossed in his food. "They're great! Harry loves 'em."

Severus turned to look at the child, whom, he had just noticed, in addition to making a racket, was also covered in jam and egg yolk and happily marching his toasted bread across his plate and table, flinging jam, yolk, and crumbs everywhere, laughing giddily to himself every few minutes as though he'd just done something really hilarious.

"My mom always made them jam hats. Like the queen's guards! See?" She dipped her finger in the black currant jam on one of his toast fingers, and stuck the finger in her mouth with a grin.

"You're a strange woman, Lily Potter."

"Takes one to know one, Severus Snape."

"Hmm."

He picked up his fork, and made to pierce the yolk of the egg when there was a loud voice from the living room.

"Lily! Lily!"

They exchanged a brief look, and she flicked off the stove, towel grabbed up to wipe her hands as she ventured into the other room.

Severus stood, but he caught a glimpse of green flames, and stayed out of sight. He just tried to listen.

"Lily, something dreadful, Albus has me rounding everyone else up."

"What, what's happened?"

"It's Frank. Frank Longbottom. He found Bellatrix."

Her eyes widened. "What happened?"

"He's in St. Mungo's, Lily."

Severus felt a strange pang in his chest. Frank who had been the only one of them all to treat him like a _person_ when he came to them – Frank who had gone after the traitor with him.

"Oh! Oh no! Is he?"

"He's alive. Barely. They…they don't know what will become of him. She…used the Cruciatus on him."

Lily looked horrified. "And Alice?"

"She's there with him. She's not hurt. Bellatrix…ran off before Alice could get in anything good."

"I'll…I'll have to find someone to sit for Harry. I'll take him to my parents'. I'll be right along." She turned to leave.

"Lily?"

"Yes?"

"I haven't been able to get ahold of Severus. Do you know where he is?"

She pressed her lips together. "I might. I'll get him."

"Thanks."

The head disappeared and the green flames went out. She rushed back into the kitchen.

"Sev," she swallowed hard, and he took her into his arms.

_Frank. Oh god, Frank. What have you done?_

"We'll go. Right now, we'll go."

"I have to take Harry…"

"Right. Can you just apparate over there?"

"Yes. Yes."

She picked her son up from the booster seat, where he'd been contemplating the sudden wind of change with a curious look on his face.

"Mummy?"

"Yes, sweetie, you're going to Gran's house. Would you like that, to see Granmum and Grandad?"

He smiled and nodded. She used the towel to wipe the sticky jam and egg off his fingers and face, and he scrunched up his face trying to get away from her ministrations. Then, with one last look at Sev, she popped out of the kitchen.

He took the stairs two at a time, and changed quickly into his proper trousers and robes, coming back down the stairs just as she'd returned. She nodded to him, and they apparated separately to avoid suspicion.

# # # # #

"Alice!"

Alice Longbottom sat by her husband's bed, clutching his hand; several members of the Order clustered in a corner of the room, their voices low.

Her lip trembled, and then she was flooded with tears again, watching the redhead rush to her side, and lean down to embrace her.

She was flooded with guilt that the last time they had embraced was when she, Alice, had been consoling her over the loss of _her_ husband, and she had been so grateful then that Voldemort hadn't chosen her family. She felt so guilty now that she had celebrated that trick of fate – like somehow it had come back to haunt her.

But she was glad for the other woman's company. She tightened her grip around her before letting her go, her hand going right back to lace itself in with her husband's.

"Alice, I'm sorry," a male voice whispered, and she looked up into the face of Severus Snape, who looked forlornly at her husband's still body.

She remembered that Frank had been fond of Severus. Together they had hunted down Peter Pettigrew, and Frank had confided in her that he had no qualms about the young man's loyalties – he may have been confused then, but now his heart was in the right place, even if he had a rough time showing it.

She gave the black-haired man a smile. "Thank you, Severus. I'm glad you're here. Frank…Frank wa-is awfully fond of you."

Severus managed a small smile, and patted her on the shoulder awkwardly. She appreciated the gesture from a person whom she had seen engage in so little physical contact, comforting or otherwise.

Lily looked to the Order, and Alice followed her gaze. "Go. It's okay. I'm not going anywhere," she whispered.

And then Lily looked at Severus, and Alice watched as they turned and walked away, their fingers reaching for each other and just barely brushing, before they stepped further apart, meeting the eyes of the other Order members.

Alice gripped her husband's hand tightly, but even in her own grief, managed a tiny smile.

_I'm glad for you Lily. He's a good man._

# # # # #

The mood of their conversation which had been lighthearted, trying to avoid the topic on their minds, suddenly turned after a prolonged silence.

"Did you ever…do that to anyone?"

She had whispered the words. She never asked about that time before – she had said that all that mattered was the man he was now. But she couldn't help it. All she could think was "Death Eaters" and then all she could think was "that's why we stopped being friends" and then "you became one of them – you were like her".

_No, he was never like her. Never, surely. He was just…caught up. He was never…_

He looked down into his firewhiskey – he so rarely drank, but Frank Longbottom had been almost a friend, and he couldn't help but think of his wife, the ever-cheerful Alice, who now spent her days sitting beside a hospital bed in St. Mungo's.

Lily mistook the silence for admission of guilt, and looked down into her own mug, warm butterbeer with whipped crème. She watched the crème slowly melt, unsure of how to face him, knowing he'd done that to someone.

"No." The sound had been nearly inaudible.

She looked back up, and gave him a tight smile.

"But I…I know how it feels," he continued, his voice barely above a whisper.

"You know how it feels? Severus…" she reached her hand across the table to grasp his, wrapped her slender fingers around his, and squeezed. He didn't look at her.

"How…what happened?" Her voice was soft, and he wanted to look up into her eyes, her reassuring green eyes. "You don't…have to tell me if you…don't want to." She tilted her head, trying to get him to look at her.

He suddenly lifted his shot and drained the entire thing, feeling the full potency of the charmed alcohol as it burned so painfully, ripping down his throat and settling into his belly where it simmered.

"Narcissa," he whispered, his gaze pointed at the table, but his mind was far away.

"Narcissa _Malfoy _put an Unforgiveable on you?!"

"She was Black then. And no, it was…Lucius."

"_Narcissa, what if he finds out?"_

_She kissed him again, and he couldn't force her to answer him._

"_He won't."_

_He leaned away from her, and caressed her face gently, his fingers sliding through her cornsilk locks, carefully avoiding the bruise just next to her eye that was so carefully covered by her hair. He kissed her other temple, and then her cheek, and then the corner of her mouth._

_She slid her hands under his robes, around his waist, and pulled him down into her bed._

"We…" he stuttered and almost blushed. He didn't want to be telling Lily this. But somehow…somehow he felt that once he did, he would feel better. He squeezed her hand, which she had not pulled from his grasp. Not yet. "It was sixth year. Lucius had…he had hit her."

Lily listened with rapt attention, the thought of Severus coming to the rescue and being punished for it made the back of her throat catch.

"I always knew he was a bastard, but…did he hex you for standing up to him?"

He shook his head. She had gotten it all wrong. She had gotten _him_ all wrong. He really didn't want to tell her the truth. He pulled his hand from her grasp, and his eyes darted quickly to her face – she looked sad.

"No, Lily. He did it because…because I slept with Narcissa."

She didn't move, so he continued.

"_Lucius, no!" Narcissa had called out, but he ignored her._

"_Snape, I thought I'd made very clear what was mine," Lucius spoke in a low tone, a tone he knew was dangerous. Very dangerous. And he held his wand at his side, tapping it against the leg of his trousers._

"_Lucius, whatever you think you know, you're wrong. Nothing happened." He tried to stay as calm as possible, his voice even, forcing his pulse not to leap. His eyes caught hers, and she was near tears. He knew Lucius had made her tell._

"_Hah! Nothing. I imagine that's what it was, wasn't it? _Nothing_. You're less than a man, Severus Snape! How dare you touch what is mine?!"_

_And he didn't even expect it – he'd tried for nonchalance, for submissiveness, hadn't even pulled his wand._

"_Crucio!"_

_And there was nothing but blinding pain as his body writhed on the floor of the Slytherin Common Room. No one, not a single student, moved to stop him._

"He had beaten her. Left a mark. Narcissa and I had been friendly when we were first at Hogwarts, even though I felt she thought she was slumming, being nice to me. And then, when she and Lucius were together in third year, she stopped speaking to me. I found her…hiding in the stacks of the Restricted Section. I walked her back to her room, and she kept crying. And…" He still had not lost his rapt audience, but she had pulled her hand away from where it had laid when he extricated himself from her grip. "Lucius found out. He said I had no right to touch what was his. And. Narcissa stopped him. She got him to stop. It couldn't've lasted for more than a few seconds, but…" he swallowed and with his right hand, began massaging the joints of his left hand, where his fingers met his palm. "I still remember how it felt."

She just stared at him, she didn't know how to reply. She wasn't sure if she was angry that he had slept with her…

_Angry? Why? I'm not his keeper. And besides, it was years ago._

_Years. A long time._

_And besides, you were with James. You can't expect he was a saint of virtue all that while he carried a torch for you, could you?_

_Could you?_

_But. Narcissa._

_Narcissa. Narcissa. Narcissa._

...or furious that he had been struck with an Unforgiveable. Both fierce emotions wrested for her, and none of them played across her face. She was still.

While the staid look on her face was enough to make him wish he hadn't told, he still found himself glad he did. It was a part of his life that he'd shared with no one else – even if it did involve the only other woman he'd ever cared for.

* * *

A/N: I know Lucius Malfoy is already a prefect, so at least a few of years ahead (a sixth year?), when Snape is Sorted into Slytherin. But I don't imagine he'd be looked down upon, visiting the young students of his old House at Hogwarts – and it's the perfect excuse to recruit Death Eaters too.


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: Sorry if the last two chapters seemed a bit disjointed. Part were 'cut scenes' and part was written together to link particular plot points. Hopefully this one flows a little better - written from start to finish.

* * *

"Did you…did you love her?"

He had resigned himself to her silence. It sliced his heart like a knife.

_She can't love me after that._

_But…at least I told her._

"Love her?" He looked up, meeting her eyes, which were still flat, unreadable.

"Yes."

His gaze returned to the table, as though analyzing the grain of the wood. "No. Cared for her, maybe. But. One night is no way to love someone. We had barely spoken for three years before that, and we have not properly since." He paused, and still she didn't speak. He couldn't take the emptiness that hung between them. "Lucius…he still doesn't trust me. Not…not around her."

"But you told Dumbledore he was the one who recruited you."

"Yes. But he separated the me that was an asset to the Dark Lord from the me that slept with his wife."

Lily bit her lip. She was condemning him for something in his past – just as she had vowed not to condemn him for his past with darkness, she was condemning him for a memory of the only time he had gotten reprieve from reality.

"Severus."

He didn't reply. He couldn't look at her.

_Why won't you look at me?_

"Severus. Look at me."

He obeyed, and once again she found his face full of emotion. How had he managed to shut all that away? How had he become the man that joined Voldemort, that still closed himself off from everyone and everything…except from her?

"_You were with them again, weren't you?"_

"_What do you care? I said I was sorry I was late. Now, can we get on with it?"_

_She shook her head. "Sorry. Sorry every time. I thought we were friends."_

_He looked exasperated. "We are. Best friends. You keep bringing it up like that's ever going to change."_

"_It is. It's already changing."_

"_And you want it to?"_

"_I didn't say that."_

_He leaned back in the wooden chair, and crossed his arms across his chest. "And yet you keep bringing it up. Is there something you have to say, Lily Evans? Just say it. I'm tired of your veiled accusations."_

"_Veiled? You think 'those boys are trouble' is _veiled_?! Well then perhaps I should enunciate a little better! They're Death Eaters, Severus! I know it! They're dangerous!"_

"_You don't know that."_

"_I _do _know that. I can…I can feel it." She thumped her chest with a closed fist. "I don't want you to stray down that path. I don't…they're not good for you."_

"_I do believe we had this conversation barely a week ago, Lily. And a week before that, even. You said my friends were trouble, and I said yours were too. So we get along with different people. So what? My friends have never done a damn thing to you."_

"_Mary…"_

"_I don't care what they did to Mary. That was ages ago. Your friends torment me every chance they get. And you don't hear me harping on you about _your _choices."_

"_You do too."_

"_Well, when a guy's had a rather rough attempt to break a few bones inflicted on him, he might tend to get a bit tetchy. So sorry."_

_She frowned at his mocking tone. "But James and Sirius – they are wastes of space sometimes, and yes, they are cruel to you, and yes, I've told them so. But those guys, like Mulciber and Avery, they're not just bullying people. And it's not going to get better. Only worse."_

_He shoved back his chair, reached forward, and flipped his book shut. He stood, picking up his book and notebook._

"_I'm going to go do this by myself."_

"_But we always study together for Potions."_

"_And it's becoming a bit more trouble than it's worth. If I wanted another mother, I'd've asked for one."_

_She shoved back her own chair and stood, her palms pressed down on the table. "If I was acting like your mother, you'd know it! I'm trying to be your _friend_, Sev! I'm trying to tell you that this can't end well. I'm trying to _help _you."_

"_I don't _need _your help, or your sympathy or your bloody mothering. You haven't given up _your _friends despite what they've done to _me._ And mine have done nothing to you. Nothing! Leave it alone, Lily!"_

"_Sev, just listen to me, please. You know I wouldn't say this if…"_

"_What, if you weren't trying to keep me as your pet wizard?"_

"_What?"_

"_I'm at your beck-and-call, whenever you ask. I'm your old standby. And I'm sick of it. Maybe I want to be important, maybe I want to be a part of something."_

"_A part of something? A part of something like whatever it is they're messing about with? You'd really want to do that?"_

"_Maybe. Maybe I'm useful to someone else, and you don't like it very much at all."_

"_Useful?! You think I keep you around because you're _useful_?!"_

"_Well I can't see why else you do. It's not like when we were kids, Lil. Things are different now."_

"_Only because you let them be."_

"_Only because they _are_."_

"_So what, you're going to walk out that door, and what? We're going to stop being friends?"_

"_That's not what I said."_

"_Well then let me say it." She picked up her books and strode for the door, swinging it open. "You don't listen to me, you don't care about me, nothing I say or do matters to you anymore. All you can see is them, you can't see that _I'm _not them. I'm still who I was, I was still your friend. But if you don't want that, fine. I'm gone."_

_She turned on her heel and walked out the door, her steps fading down the hallway._

_He just stood there, and a little part of his heart broke._

"_I just wanted to protect you," he said quietly._

"What?"

She snapped out of her reverie. "What do you mean, what?"

"You said 'look at me', and here I am, looking at you, and you're somewhere else," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry."

They were quiet again, but this time it didn't feel so heavy, so oppressing. She'd had plenty of time to get up and walk away – plenty of time to berate him and leave. Plenty of time, and yet she still sat there.

She tensed her jaw, and looked up at him, now he was scratching his fingernail on the wood table, staring at the little mark he was digging.

She watched as first he peeled away grime, and then layers of lacquer, and now it was beginning to discolour.

She reached across the table and took his hand in hers. "Stop that."

He looked up at her, and pulled his hand from her grasp. "Are you angry with me?"

"Angry with you? For sleeping with Narcissa Malfoy?" She spoke a little louder than she intended, and they had a captive audience for a few moments before their stillness and silence became boring to be so carefully listening in on, and the patrons went back to their beers.

He just nodded.

"I don't think I have a right to be."

"But are you still?"

She thought for a moment. "No. Not angry. Sad, maybe. But not because of Narcissa. Well, sad _for _her, mayhap, trapped in that marriage with that man…"

"She loves him."

"He hits her and she loves him?"

"He doesn't hit her anymore."

"How do you know?"

"She wears her hair up. She always wore it down to cover the bruises because he never got closer to her face than that – he never wanted to damage his goods that he showed off to the world."

"And that means she loves him?"

"She stays with him, doesn't she? And besides," he looked down. "She's different now. She became a Death Eater, like him…"

"You never told Dumbledore that. You never told the Ministry that."

"She wore the robes, but I never saw her curse anyone. Just as I _know_ Lucius was under the robes when hexes were flying, but I was never sure enough it was him. Circumstantial, all of it. It lets him walk free."

She began thinking of all those that had slipped through their fingers – Lucius Malfoy was certainly the worst of them because he _had _been caught, he was within their grasp, and yet still the slick bastard managed to get off. Bellatrix Lestrange left her husband to be captured instead of herself – while no one ever said it, a few of the Aurors who'd found Rudolphus were sure his wife had hexed him with some sort of paralysis so he would be caught, but also that he would then suffer torture, rather than immediate death. Bellatrix was not the sort of wife one wanted to be a step behind.

"Why do you think she loves him?"

"She's different now. Her face is hard. The Narcissa I knew is long gone."

"I'm…sorry, Sev."

He let out a short, sad laugh. "Sorry? Gods, no. Don't be sorry for me. If you can find it in your heart to be sorry for her, for her loss of innocence at the hands of her husband, of the world, do that. But don't be sorry for me because I lost her. I never had her. How can you lose something you never had?"

She pressed her lips together, trying to sort out the words that were in her head, but couldn't quite make it to her tongue. "She was there for you when I wasn't. When I was so pigheaded I couldn't make it better. I could hear it in your voice when you spoke of her. A sort of…tenderness," her voice dropped to a whisper at the last word, but then she regained the strength to continue. "When you needed someone…"

"Lily, you can't blame yourself for us. Two people, remember? Two people who were both to blame. And Narcissa was not a balm to me, though I was to her that night. I was never friends with her, certainly not of the caliber I was with you. No one ever replaced you, Lily. No one. There was been a void in that place in my heart for over seven years."

A smile quirked at her lips at that, and she felt a sharp sting in her eyes that she blinked back before it became obvious. "And now?" She whispered.

"And now?" He reached across the table to curl his fingers around her own, and bent his head to look her in the eye, speaking softly as she had. "Now my heart is full to bursting, despite the horrors that dog us. How could I be any other way? I have you back, and you sit in that very seat and have every opportunity to judge me, and yet you don't. Instead of passing judgment, all you have for me is sympathy. And not the simpering kind, but the true and real kind. You're an amazing woman, Lily Potter. I'm lucky to have every moment with you."

Her smile was a little more pronounced this time. She squeezed his fingers. "It's not luck, Sev," she replied.

_It's love._

* * *

A/N: As has been so truthfully pointed out to me, Lily and Severus have been through a lot - they have to change a little, if not more, deviating from what we know. I hope I am keeping canon that which can be, and showing logical progressions for my changes. Reviews, as always, muchly appreciated.

Also: Am deviating from my own outline. Have thought of a different take on Sirius and Severus - they have to hash it out sometime, and I originally had them hashing it out later, over a different-yet-related issue. And have decided Sirius Black is not one to let things stew. Not sure when next it will be up, but if the muses grace me, it and its fellows will be out in the next couple of days. Hope I'm still keeping everyone's interest! I promise, there is more to come - even if I can't put a number on the chapters we have left. So there. I told you what you have to look forward to :)


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: Damn this fic is getting long. A mind of its own, I tell you. Now that you're getting this really long chapter, I gotta figure out what to do next. Because my outline? Might as well be a kindergartener's scribble for all the sense it makes now. Might be a few days for the next chapter. In the meantime...Sirius Black vs. Severus Snape. Round One! Ding!

* * *

"Now why must you stir it only three and a half times instead of four or three?"

"You must not complete the circle. Three times does not wind it far enough to its full effectiveness, and four will deactivate the lavender when mixed with the oak moss."

"Good. Good," the potions master whispered, leaning over the desk of his third year student, who was intelligent enough to ask for help when it was obvious she was abysmal at the subject. Luckily, she was rather good at memorization, even if he would unfortunately prove not a word of it would sink in if he rephrased the question.

"Severus Snape."

Snape looked up from where he stood at the front of the room, leaning over the desk.

"Black," he replied conversationally, standing up to face the other man. "I don't have time for your nonsense. What do you want?"

Sirius did not reply, but instead marched up the aisle to the Potions Master and decked him, square in the mouth.

The student screeched and knocked over a chair, tumbling and then running out of the room.

Snape whirled back on Sirius and backhanded him across the face. Then his wand was drawn, and Sirius was thrown backwards, crashing into a desk.

Sirius sat on the floor, and grinned. "I knew it. I knew that you were trouble for her."

Severus touched his mouth gently, and looked at his fingers, bloody from his split lip. "And I should have known that you would immediately resort to violence."

He laughed. "And it surprises me you would tender such a reply. Where did you learn such a base reaction, _Snivellus_?"

"I had a father who felt it was the best way to communicate. I, however, felt otherwise. Until now."

Sirius let out a short laugh, and then stood slowly, his wand raised. "I'm half tempted to hex you into next week you miserable git. But actually, I quite liked that punch," he seemed pleased with himself and shook the offending hand, still pointing his wand with the other.

"You'll never get the chance," Severus said darkly.

"Oh, wouldn't I? _Levicorpus!_"

But Snape blocked it easily.

"You're still as stupid as you were in school, you mindless _twit_. You could never best me with a wand, and so you used brute force." He smiled, his teeth bloody.

"Oh, but that is my very favorite spell."

"I remember."

"And I seem to remember you called my best girl a _Mudblood_. I never got you back properly for that. _Flagrate!_"

Snape blocked it again with barely a wave and countered with one of his own.

"Silencio."

Sirius grabbed his throat, and was rendered helpless. He realized he was beaten by wand, and began to march towards Severus.

"Locomotor _Mortis_," he hissed quietly, and Black was stopped in his tracks. Severus stalked towards him, and with a flick, bound his hands, and then jabbed his wand under Sirius's chin, speaking to him softly and calmly.

"You can have nothing to say to me, Black. The only reason I do not kill you now, and I could, and destroy your body so that you would never be found, and I _could_, is because of her. What goes on between Lily and I is none of your concern," he raised his eyebrows at the other man, looking for some sign of recognition. "There is nothing you could say or do that will stop me from loving her."

The silencing charm was meager, and he had meant it to be. Sirius began to regain his voice.

"You don't love her," he rasped, wand still at his throat, still bound and frozen to the spot.

"That is none of your concern," he enunciated each word, his voice almost singsong in its melody.

"You made her keep it from her friends. You made her _lie_ for you. Still afraid of me, are you, you _coward_."

Snape shoved the wand once, and Sirius let out a choking sound.

"If anyone here is a coward, it is you, Black. You're just as infatuated with her as I once was. But unlike you, she _returned_ my affection, and it makes you furious. You're just too _weak_ to admit when you've been beaten by a better man."

"Better man! Ha!" He grinned, tilting his head down as far as he could with the wand poking under his mandible. "Unlike you, I saw those bastards for what they were – I gave up my _family_ to do the right thing, and what did you do? Nothing. You just followed them, like the _snake_ you are, and came running back on your _knees_. You are not the better man. Not in a million years."

"_Dogs_ are the ones who follow. _Dogs_ are the ones who come running back for forgiveness with their tails between their legs. You've never had an independent thought in your life, Black – never gave a thought to anyone but yourself." Then his voice lowered, and he twisted his wand a little, pushing it a little more into the soft flesh of Sirius's neck. "You couldn't even wait for your _best friend_ to be cold before you started to move in on his _wife_."

Sirius did the only thing he could. He spat on Severus, catching him just below the eye. "You have no idea what you're talking about. I loved James as I never loved my own family. He _was_ my family. All I was doing was protecting his _widow_ from the likes of _you_. I saw you," he managed to sneer, to look utterly disgusted despite his state of helplessness. "I saw you, _watching_ her, that look on your face, you sodding _letch_, just waiting for your chance."

Severus opened his mouth to reply when a voice echoed into his classroom.

"Severus! Let him go!"

"Sev! What are you doing?"

He turned his face to see Remus and Lily standing in his doorway. He stared at them for several moments, his face impassive, and everyone stood strangely still, like they expected him to do something…dark.

_Lovely. That's trust, right there._

He let out a huff and turned away from Sirius, and with a flick over his shoulder, Sirius fell to the floor, unbound and unfrozen. He turned his head quickly, to see Lily run to Sirius on the floor, and Remus slowly stroll towards them, hands in his trouser pockets. He narrowed his eyes at them, and strode across the front of the room towards his office.

"Sev! Sev, wait!" He waved her off and kept walking.

Then Lily stood, and, fist clenched at her sides, yelled.

"Get back here right now Severus Snape!"

Her tone of voice was unmistakably maternal, and he riled a little bit at being spoken to like a child. But there was also that undertone of genuine anger, and he turned on his heel to face them, crossed his arms across his chest, and tilted his head at her, one eyebrow raised, as if to say "well, get on with it."

She opened her mouth, intending to berate him right then, but then took in her audience. She gritted her teeth and walked towards him, hissing "Office. Now." as she strode past.

He rolled his eyes and turned to follow, letting the door shut a little loudly as he closed it behind him.

"What the _hell_ were you doing?"

He stared at her. "I should think it was obvious. And none of your business, I might add."

"None of _my _business? I walk into a room to see my _boyfriend_ trying to kill someone who was, until about a week ago, my _best friend_, and it's not my business, how?"

"Boyfriend? I think we're a little too old for that."

"The maturity I just saw out in that room tells me otherwise."

"Maturity? I think I was very mature. If I were three years younger, hell, two, I would have killed him on the spot."

She narrowed her eyes at him, and seemed to just notice his split lip and the bruise which was forming on his mouth and chin.

"What the hell happened to you?"

He took in her gaze and reached up to touch his face. "Oh, this? This is some of the maturity you missed. This is why I shoved my wand into his throat. You're damn lucky that's all I did."

"He _hit_ you?"

"Why are you surprised?"

She had no reply.

"He waltzed into my classroom, socked me in the jaw and chased away my student who was, thankyouverymuch, on the verge of actually _learning_ something."

She looked confused. "Why would he…?"

He managed a short laugh. "Are you serious?"

She just looked more befuddled.

He leaned back on his arms, his palms on his desk, and crossed his ankles. "He's in love with you."

"Sirius?"

"No. The Pope. Yes, Sirius."

"Couldn't be."

"Oh it couldn't, could it? Do enlighten me."

"He said he wasn't."

"Hah," Severus replied dryly, and shifted his weight, reaching up a hand to tenderly feel for the edges of the bruise.

"No, really. He said he might've wished we had a second chance, but…"

"Oh, you mean in the conversation right before he said he supported you no matter who you were seeing, only to," he snapped his fingers in the air, "out of your house without so much as a 'sayonara'?"

She frowned at his cavalier attitude. He seemed to find no fault in his retaliation.

"He was angry. I kept it from him, and I shouldn't have."

"Oh, you think he'd be all puppies and rose petals and be so goddamn happy for you, if you'd just told him the truth, eh?" His sarcasm was edged with anger.

"That's not what I…this is not about me! This is about you! This is about you not being the bigger man, and just backing off!"

He stood up from his relaxed pose against the desk. "Be the bigger man?! Back off?! I'm sorry, but I don't know who you think you are that you can just wave your magic wand and get rid of years of ingrained hatred. I can do a lot of things for you, Lily, but I cannot just let Sirius Black walk all over me. If being a Death Eater did one good thing for me, it made me grow a bloody backbone. I will not be tortured and bullied by his like any more. I won't."

She wanted to take issue with his finding 'one good thing' about being the Dark Lord's lackey, but instead took issue with something else. "You were always better than them one on one. The only reason he ever succeeded was that he was never alone. You should know better – you should know just to let well enough alone."

He leaned backwards again, his lower back resting on the lip of the desk. "I think I did. He tried his level best to hex the shit out of me, and all I did was block them. The only spells I cast were to shut him up so I could say my peace, and make sure he couldn't hit me again," he informed her calmly, his eyes belying a different emotion than his voice.

"Severus," she wasn't sure where she was going with this. She intended to at least make him realize that he was wrong, but knowing that Sirius had started it, that Severus thought Sirius was in love with her, there were too many things swirling in her head.

He watched her, her eyes becoming more glazed over as the truth sunk in. Despite it taking place in _his_ classroom, she somehow thought he started it. Somehow she thought, instead of taking his turned leaves into account, immediately that he was to blame, that he was intending something far darker than a simple talking-to.

He let out a sigh, and she looked up at him. "I'm sorry that you don't trust me, Lily,"

"I do, Sev. I do trust you."

"No, no you don't. Not really. You jumped straight down my throat the moment you walked in that door, not giving a second's thought to the possibility that I wasn't the one who started it, that I wasn't intending on killing the man."

"You didn't walk into what I walked into," she rebutted. "I walked into a room and saw one friend bound and immobile while a man I care about very much stood with his wand shoved into my friend's throat, and the look on your face! How was I supposed to think otherwise than to ask you to back down – you were the one in control. I could hardly say 'Sirius! Leave him alone!' when you were the one who had him trussed up and at your mercy."

"Mercy. Exactly. _My mercy_. And when it comes to you, I find I have considerably more mercy in regards to Sirius Black than I ever would have otherwise. Don't you understand that? You are the one who keeps my darkness at bay, and yet instead of being rewarded for my efforts, I'm rebuked like a child for rising to the occasion of a man who bullied me for years when I finally have the upper hand."

She was silent. She stepped forward and grasped his hands in her own, and met his eyes. "I'm sorry for thinking the worst of you."

"Thank you."

"But you must understand. I know how you feel about him, and I know that even when you were young you wanted the chance to get him back, and good. It was that, and nothing else that made me think what I did. Knowing that now, you have more power than he does, only serves to worry me that when you do come to blows, which I hope never happens, it won't end well, no matter what. And I don't want that for either of you. And I can't help thinking that…were our lives just a little different, you might…you might have been friends."

"Friends? I doubt it."

"No, really, Sev. You have more in common with Sirius than you know."

"Aside from the fact that we're both in love with the same woman, I see absolutely no grounds for similarity. And I don't want to. On those grounds, I have the upper hand, and that is enough for me, despite our past."

She raised her eyebrows. "Oh really?"

He gave her a small smile. "Really." Then he leaned forward and kissed her quickly on the lips. "After all these years, I win."

She smiled. "You _win_?"

"Yes. I win. Sirius Black can do whatever he likes, I don't care. Of course, if he decks me again, I can't vouch for what I may or may not do, but I find that, generally, I don't give a bleeding hell what he thinks of me or how much he hates me."

"Severus. I can't keep making excuses, I can't keep pretending like one or the other of you doesn't exist in each other's company. Keeping us secret, when there wasn't even an 'us' to begin with, was torture. I want Sirius back – but I can't tiptoe around you two. I won't. It's that simple." She sighed. "I would much rather you not hex each other into next week, but something has to be done."

He shrugged. "Seems to me that's his problem, not mine. I don't like him, but I never said I had a problem with you being friends with him."

She looked disbelieving.

"Alright. I haven't said it lately. I've been very good," he smiled.

She smiled back. "Except for today, yes, you've been very good."

"No, including today," he insisted. "I really wanted to injure him. Possibly so he couldn't reproduce or even wank comfortably."

She let out a laugh, and one hand released his to cover her mouth. Then she spoke from between her fingers. "Please don't."

"What? Weren't we just talking about how good I've been? I think I deserve some sort of reward. Especially considering I was convicted before all the evidence was presented out there."

She let out a sigh. "Oh, I suppose." She leaned forward, and kissed him on the nose.

"Well. That was anticlimactic," he murmured. She smiled and leaned in again, this time kissing the corner of his mouth.

"Ouch!" He reached up a hand. "That hurts."

She gave him a soft kiss on the lips. "Better?"

"A little."

"Good."

# # # # #

"They're not yelling any more. Maybe she's given him the boot."

Remus just stared at the closed door. "I doubt it."

Sirius, who had risen from the floor, and now leaned against a desk, turned sharply to his friend. "You knew about this, didn't you?"

Remus just shrugged.

"You knew, and you didn't tell me."

"And you would have done what? Tried to beat the hell out of him earlier? I think not."

"I can't believe this. He was a miserable git to you as well, Moony. Don't forget that."

"Yes, I know. And I also know that you and James weren't angels either."

Sirius looked incredulous, but yet was not overcome by anger. "We were your friends, not him. Why are you defending him?"

Remus looked at him. "Didn't say I was. Just said that neither of you was right." He paused. "And did you ever think to talk to Lily about it instead of just waltzing into the school and laying into him?"

"She had plenty of chances to talk to me. She lied to me."

"Lied?"

"By omission. She knew…"

"Knew how you would react, I'm sure." Remus's gaze went back to the closed door. "So why are you still here, waiting? You can't be waiting for her, as you obviously have no intention of trying to work things out with her. Bad idea, by the way. And I doubt you'd be allowed to try again at him."

Black scoffed. "Hah."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"So what are you still here for?" Remus stared at him, waiting for an answer.

"Maybe we need to talk."

Remus rocked back on his heels and then turned towards the open door of the classroom. "May be." He started walking, and waved over his shoulder at his friend. "See you at the pub later?"

"Yeah."

* * *

A/N: And before anyone throws up their hands and leaves because Lily keeps forgiving him and he keeps getting off scot-free for dwelling on the past when he is asking everyone else to move on from dwelling on _his _past, let me point out that onions have a lot of layers. That is all.

P.S. I'm loving Remus. Maybe none of you are seeing him as I do when I'm writing this, but. Love. Lovelove.

Also, changed the rating back to "T". Seems that other fics I've seen with the "T" rating have a bit of nasty language to them too on occasion. And since I'm not dropping the f-bomb every three sentences, I figure it's safe. If anyone else feels different, I will take into consideration changing it back. I would have figured "R" for the language, but I'm not entirely familiar with this rating system, despite reading the little guides every other week.


	15. Chapter 15

A/N: I must take this time to point out a few things: firstly, the student of the last chapter was, I believe, upset enough by seeing such an altercation take place that he/she ran off to find the first professor he/she could, the first authority figure, to which he/she might address the event. I had this authority figure be Lupin, who was, coincidentally, in his office or classroom or wherever with Lily in his company. I apologize if this were not more obvious.

Also: Had this big long treatise written about the Lily/Severus relationship, regarding post-grieving guilt, maturity versus age (they're what, 23?), and misinterpretations of betrayal, but will instead just note that I apologize that the subtleties are not coming across. Will attempt more inner monologue bits to rectify this situation so that their thoughts and feelings are more obvious. Am just worried that such a thing, in excess to prove my point, will just drive you all away. Instead will ask that you just bear with me, and that if you have concerns about how things are unfolding, you leave a review and allow me to address them so that you may go back and read again with my thoughts in mind – don't give up on me! Also, please don't think that one or the other of them is more or less to blame for the state of their relationship. As per the above issues, everyone's got some baggage to work through. Onions. Layers. Thanks for sticking with me so far.

Now. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

* * *

Sirius stood up straight when he heard the creak of the wooden door of the potions master's office. His ears picked up what he could not immediately see, and he slouched against the desk again, some strange, unpleasant feeling coiling in his gut.

She emerged first, then immediately crossing the threshold turned around in the small opening between door and jamb, blocking the view of whomever else was in the room, her red hair cascading down her back. She murmured, her voice lowered, and then he heard the sound of several quick, yet lingering kisses, and then a baritone voice made a comment that made her giggle, and kiss him again.

Sirius felt like he was going to be sick.

Then she turned back around, her gaze towards the floor, and the door closed behind her.

She looked up, not expecting to see anyone, and found Sirius Black leaning against a desk. Waiting.

She stood still, and just looked at him, waiting for him to explain himself first.

When he couldn't seem to string together the words, she filled in the silence.

"What are you still doing here, Sirius?"

"I…wanted to talk to you."

"Well I'm here. Talk."

"Can we…do this somewhere else?"

"What, a classroom bother you this much?"

He just looked at her, as though it were not the classroom itself so much as the person who was mere feet away behind one measly door.

"Whatever," she said, and began to walk away.

He stood up from the desk and ran parallel to her, between rows, reaching the door first. "Wait. Wait. Can we talk, please?"

"I don't know, can we?"

He took this as encouragement, as it definitely was not discouragement. He opened the door a bit wider and gestured for her to precede him.

She did, and they walked up the stairs in silence, then out of the dungeon stairwell, and into the hallway.

The hallway was empty, and he was glad for it. She started to walk, though not fast, and he fell into step beside her.

They walked past two classrooms before she stopped and turned to him. "I thought you wanted to talk."

"Could we go for tea?"

She pressed her lips together, then nodded once. They walked in silence out of the school and down the pathway towards Hogsmeade. They were almost halfway there before he spoke again.

"Lily, I'm sorry about the other day."

"Oh, about leaving without so much as a sayonara?" She let a bit of a smile tug at the corner of her mouth, repeating his words, and he brightened a little at her improved mood, only to be brought back down when she realized he'd seen and resumed her mask of calculated displeasure and indifference.

"Yeah. Yes. I was…angry, and confused and while I still think I did the right thing, instead of staying and making things even worse, I still shouldn't've done it the way I did."

She just nodded once as they walked, but did not reply.

"But I think I have every right to be angry with you."

"Oh, so now it's me you're angry with? Care to slug me one, then?" She pointed to the side of her chin, where he'd hit Severus.

"No."

"Well good, glad we got that cleared up."

"You lied to me."

"I did no such thing."

"No, you did. A lie of omission, but a lie just the same. You knew what you were keeping from me, knew it would upset me, and yet you still did it."

Her arms were crossed across her chest, hands tucked in at the elbows while she walked, mostly staring at the ground. She looked at him when she spoke, still moving forward.

"You ever think that maybe I was trying to figure out the right time, and that I wanted to tell you, so badly, but knew I wouldn't get the reaction I wanted, and so maybe had a harder time of it?"

"The reaction you wanted? What reaction did you expect, Lily?"

"Well my friend, who said he would support me no matter what because he loved me, that's what."

He stopped suddenly and turned to face her, pointing his finger at her, his boots crunching on gravel and turn in his pivot. She stopped just ahead of him when she heard him cease his forward motion.

"You set me up, Lily. You _knew_, and hell, _Remus_ knew, and still you didn't tell me. Why?"

"I told you why – because I knew you wouldn't take it well."

"Damn right I wouldn't take it _well_!" He resumed walking. "But that's no excuse for the lies. I thought we were better friends than that."

"Not when it comes to Severus."

"Actually, I was putting off that specific bit. I was still talking about how you lied to me instead of just coming out and telling me the truth from the get-go."

This time she stopped and turned to him, throwing her arms in the air. "You're talking circles! The reason I didn't tell you is because I know how you feel about him! How could I expect you to understand?"

"You couldn't!"

"Exactly!"

"No, that's not a reason to keep it from me – that's a reason to be unsurprised when I yelled at you and walked off."

"Oh, and that's less rude than just disapparating out of my house?"

"Yes. Because then you would have ample time to call me back, which I would pointedly ignore."

"My, we're self-important today."

"Lily…"

"What, Sirius, what? I just got done telling him that I'm not going to pretend anymore."

"Pretend?"

"Pretend like one or the other of you doesn't exist. Pretend like you don't mean the world to me and that I'm not sleeping with him." She could help but stab once more, simply because she felt he'd abandoned her. "Which I quite enjoy, by the way."

The frown he gave her reminded her of being four, and thinking earthworms were really cool, and Petunia just barely getting out the words 'put that down'.

Then she felt a little guilty. Just because he had to come to terms with it, didn't mean it had to be more than just an abstract idea rather than actual grounded imagery.

"Sirius, please. I don't want to lose you."

He reached out a hand, and took one of hers, and spoke staring down at their twined fingers. "You'd never lose me, Lilypad. It's just…well, no bloke'd be good enough for you anyway. Fact that it's Sni…Snape, doesn't boost the points a whole helluva lot."

She squeezed his hand. Then she thought that maybe she'd get a straight answer out of him – one she could never get out of Severus.

"Sirius…why? Why do you hate him?"

Sirius looked surprised, and opened his mouth, surely to ask her why she _liked_ him, and to declaim numerous bad deeds, but that's not what she really wanted.

"I mean, to me, he was always kind. Quiet. Yeah, he got to be a real git after fourth year, but I thought it was just because we were older, and we were growing apart. I always thought I understood him. Even after all that happened, I guess…I guess I never hated him. I always thought that maybe he'd sort it out, he'd do the right thing in the end, and he did. And he was never cruel to you, not until after you were to him…why do it?"

Sirius dropped her hand, and put his hands in his trousers, shrugging his shoulders, and then turning to continue walking. "Boys, you know. I mean, that day on the train? You were a pretty girl, and he was an unwashed, self-important little grease-spot. I didn't like 'im, is all. Sometimes people just don't like people."

"So? You could just've ignored him. You didn't have to make it into a life-long saga."

"He was a Slytherin."

"_So?_"

"He was just like them, just like my family. Self-important, and…" he shrugged again. "At first it was just about that – and then…and then it was about you."

"About _me_?"

Sirius let out a laugh through his nostrils. "You were the prettiest girl in our year," he put up a finger in illustration, "because I don't count my cousin, because that's just icky," he made like he was going to continue, and then just stopped, lost in thought.

She reached out to touch his arm lightly, to jar him back into speech.

"And I liked you. And…you were always hanging about with him, and I already didn't like him, and then he was always with _you_, and…" he shrugged again. "Boys."

She stopped, and they were within sight of the gates of Hogsmeade.

"Boys? You're telling me that you two have been at each other's throats for ten years because…_boys do that_?"

He shrugged. "Yeah."

She looked at the ground, and inhaled deeply.

_It's now or never, kiddo_.

"Sirius."

"Hmm?"

"What happened down at the Whomping Willow?"

"Hmm?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

"Why?"

"What do you mean, 'why'? He won't tell me, and it's certainly not out of some misplaced loyalty to you. I'm telling you because you're my friend, that my boyfriend," she laughed a little at using the word in reference to him. It always seemed that of all words in the world to ever be used to describe Severus Snape, 'boyfriend' was never one of them. "It still bothers him, and…since my husband isn't alive to tell me what happened, I thought I should hear it from the other horse's mouth."

"Lily," he looked pained. "I don't want to talk about it."

"It's now or never, Sirius. If I'm ever going to sort out being okay with the fact that you think I'm dating the enemy and he thinks I'm friends with the devil, I have to know." She reached her hand back out to his. "Please."

"I'm not saying I'm proud of myself, Lily," he dropped her hand, and turned away from her.

"What happened out there, Sirius?" It was almost a whisper.

He stared out towards the town of Hogsmeade, and took a deep breath.

"I…I pretended to be you. I…got him to go down there…where we…where Moony would go…on the full moon."

Her mouth dropped open, but she couldn't get the words out.

"I…I locked him in."

"_Sirius_," she gasped.

"James, he…he," he turned to face, her, and one hand was in his hair, almost mimicking the man he described. "He was always a bloody hero, you know? I mean, he was every bit the bastard I was, don't get me wrong, I'd found a real brother there, I loved that man like I never loved my own brother. But..he was also the one that it fell to to…sort us out when Remus…wasn't around."

"You _locked _him in?"

Sirius looked suddenly indignant. "I didn't kill him, he's not a werewolf, what do you _want_ from me? I was in _love_ with you, and you wouldn't see me, not with him around!"

Every argument she may have had fell spectacularly away.

"In love with me?" She whispered.

"Yes. Just because James is the one who got to marry you doesn't mean he was the only one who ever…"

"Sirius, we dated in third year. It was…_weird_. Like…I don't know. You know. It wasn't working."

"You thought it wasn't working. I was happy."

"Happy?"

"Happy. For the first time in my life, I was happy. But just me being happy, and you not, well, I wasn't going to stick around until it really started to bug you. So I broke it off. Clean break so you could move on, while I continued to pine. S'why it took James so long to ask you out proper. He was just fooling at first, but…even blokes keep things from their best mates if they think the other one can be happier." He let out a deep breath. "I told him, the summer after sixth year, and he…he said he would drop it entirely if it bothered me, but he wouldn't lie to me and tell me he wasn't a little bit in love with you. And…and because he was the best mate I ever had, I told him I wanted him to be happy, and if you made him happy," he gestured his hand, "by all means."

She looked sad, and he was a little angry at the pity he saw there. "Sirius."

He tried to laugh it off. "No, Lily, it's alright. I mean," he shrugged, "can't make a girl love me."

_But you sure can make one feel damn guilty for not, can't you?_

"So…how about that tea?" He said awkwardly.

She gave him a tight smile, and slid her arm into the crook of his, one of his hands still shoved in a trouser pocket.

"Yeah. Tea would be nice."

* * *

A/N: Okay. This was completely unexpected. This is not how I imagined this chapter. But it just kept going, and then it felt like it was going _somewhere_ that I couldn't quite put my finger on. And I think that I may be losing people in the simple realism of interpersonal relationships – this being yet another. You don't always get the answers you're expecting, and sometimes you learn things that put things into a different sort of perspective, shelving your arguments for a later date.

I'm hoping this will be the last justification author's note for awhile. As always, if you're not sure about something, or want to question my judgment in a non-flaming manner, leave a review or a PM.

Reviews are love, and I hope you stick around!


	16. Chapter 16

A/N the First: Sorry it's been so long. I know, I should be taken out back and beaten into creativity. I just got a little stonewalled by Sirius Black. The man is worse than Allen Schezar - always elbowing about for a bigger part in my fics. Daffy bastard. Anyway. Have most of the next chapter written, but edited and rewrote this one like crazy - hence its lateness. And it's chock full of flashbacks, which I hope will illustrate who I think Lily and Severus and Sirius are at this point - based on their collective pasts. And, at long last, some things are resolved. Okay, one thing. But it's a Good and Important Thing. Also, shout out to Dane Cook. Sirius Black could totally work for the DMV. If you can find my funny in here, you deserve a medal of awesome.

A/N the First and a Half: Language warning here. And yes, I did talk that way when I was sixteen. And my experience of British kids is that they learn and utilize that sort of language a lot earlier than home-grown bumpkins like myself. Slightly scary, that.

A/N the Second: Allow me to share with you some lyrics, which I do not own, but which are owned and operated by Nada Surf. I think a Marauder's Era fanmix is in order, thanks to this little tune…

_If you wanna date other people say so / Be prepared for the boy to feel hurt and rejected / Even if you've gone together for only a short time / And haven't been too serious / There's still a feeling of rejection / When someone says she prefers the company of others / To your exclusive company.../ Being attractive is the most important thing there is / If you wanna catch the biggest fish in your pond / You have to be as attractive as possible…/ I'm the party star / I'm popular / I've got my own car / I'm popular / I'll never get caught / I'm popular…_

* * *

Tea turned into supper, and she lost track of time.

It had been so long since they had just _been _together. Even if their pretense had faded from his mind, it was still present in hers. But it was pushed away by jovial conversation, and she wanted that right now, more than she ever wanted to fight, no matter what the cause. She wasn't quite sure how to deal with the thing that hung above their heads, not just yet. She wanted to hold it against him, and she supposed she did, but his motives still rang in her ears.

_I was in love with you_.

She heard him pat the folded jacket on the booth seat beside him – heard the sound of a lighter and the first inhalation of a fag.

And she was sixteen again.

"_Leave him alone, both of you."_

_Sirius leaned back against the tree, folding his arms behind his head, cigarette dangling from his mouth. He grinned._

"_Why? Your boyfriend is a dick."_

"_He's not my boyfriend."_

"_I would hope not. That's disgusting. He's a _snake_ for the love of fuck."_

"_For the love of fuck? Oh that's creative, James," Lily shot back.  
_

"_I like it. For the love of fuck. And you know I do love to fuck," Sirius grinned at his friend, who poked his tongue in the corner of his mouth, trying to stem the laughter._

_James then regarded him with mock contemplation. "Like the song? I like to boogie, but instead, I..."_

"_I like the nookie?"_

"_I like it."_

"_Could be a hit."_

"_I'd listen."_

"_Only because you weren't getting any," Sirius laughed and they shoved each other back and forth a few times._

"_Seriously."_

_Sirius leaned forward from the tree, and took a drag off his cigarette. "Seriously Sirius," he mimicked her._

_She exhaled loudly._

_He took another drag, and peered at her through the smoky haze. "You know, you're a right cunt sometimes, Evans."_

"_Don't you wish."_

"_Oh-ho!" James laughed out-right this time, and Sirius pinched the end of his cigarette and flicked it at the other boy._

"_Hey, you tosser! You're gonna mark up my new robes."_

"_Can it, Potter. Your mummy'll buy you new ones."_

"What're you thinking about?"

His voice interrupted her recollection.

"Hmm?"

"You just got all...quiet. Staring off into space. What're you thinking about?" He blew the smoke out through his nostrils, his hands folded and the cigarette pinched between them.

She gave him a tight smile. "Just…thinking. You know. Roads not taken and all that."

He leaned back in the booth. "Which roads would those be?" He touched his fingers to his tongue, picking off a bit of tobacco.

She shrugged.

He swallowed hard and leaned forward, his skin prickling. "Me?"

This time her smile was sad. She'd been totally oblivious to his underlying motives – his reasoning for grandstanding his sexual prowess and playing it cool; she'd just thought he'd gone home over Christmas fourth year after they'd split and come back a bastard. She reached her hand across the table to take his. He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb, and she squeezed his hand once. "I'm sorry, you know. Sorry for not…_getting_ it, as they say. But you have to admit you were a bit of a git."

"A bit."

"More than a bit."

"More than a bit."

"In fact, a really large bit of a…"

"Hey. I said I was sorry."

"No you didn't."

"I am now."

She held his gaze for a moment, before a small smile played across her mouth. "I suppose that will have to do."

He shrugged. "Boys do strange things when the bird they fancy comes 'round."

"Like calling me a cunt?"

He had the decency to look ashamed. "Past is past," he said quietly, looking at their joined hands resting on the table.

"Yeah, but it always seems to be hovering just there, waiting to bite us in our collective arses," she said wryly.

He smiled. "Well they are rather nice arses, if I do say so myself," he grinned, and craned his neck over one shoulder, attempting to get a good look at his offending anatomy.

She laughed, letting go of his hand to cover her mouth.

"It's nice to see you laugh."

She took her hands away from her mouth, still smiling.

"What?"

"You never laugh anymore. It's nice to see you laugh." He stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, and blew the smoke out of the corner of his mouth, away from them.

Her expression sobered, and she looked at the table, at their now-cold tea water and the remainders of their very late "lunch".

"It's just…hard, you know? It's hard to happy these days. So much…_happening_. And I know I should be happy, I know I should be. I just can't stop thinking, and when I get going, it never ends well, and while the makeup sex is fabulous, I really hate arguing every damned day."

"I really didn't need to know that," he deadpanned, again with that put-down-those-earthworms look.

"Hey, I don't have many friends. In fact, I don't have a single girlfriend,"

"Mmm. You and a girlfriend. A fantasy of mine, actually," he confided, leaning forward again and propping his elbows on the table and threading his fingers together, the cigarette again scissored between index and middle fingers of opposing hands.

She looked shocked and amused, and reached over the table to swat him on the shoulder. "Stop that!"

He laughed, and tried to look stern. "Hey, watch it Potter. I could hex you," he pointed a finger at her.

With a flick of her wrist, her chin was propped on her elbow, and her wand was out, pointed at his face. His eyes were almost crossed peering at it. "You could, could you?"

"Always were fast on the draw."

"Mm," she agreed, with a cat-like grin. And then she twirled her wand in front of his face, and his eyes followed it so comically that her stomach hurt. "And all I want, more than anything in the world right now," she spoke in a staccato rhythm, twirling her wand, and tried to suffocate the giggles when his head started following it instead of just his eyes.

"Is what?" He asked with a smile, not taking his eyes off her wand.

"Is for you to understand how happy I _could_ be."

He grabbed the wand in midair, their fun abruptly ceased. "How so?"

"With him. With…Severus."

He let out a sigh, leaning backwards again, and taking a drag. He blew the smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and she lowered her wand arm, laying it across the table.

"Lily…"

"I know. I know, you said 'boys do that', but you aren't boys anymore, are you? You're men, and men I love dearly…"

"You _love_ him?"

She was taken aback. "I didn't say that."

"You did. You said '_men_ I love dearly'. So you meant more than just me."

"I-I."

They were silent for a few moments.

"Do you really mean it? Do you really love him?" His voice was quiet, the cigarette bobbing between his lips, and she noticed that his hands, which were now twined together and lay on the table in front of him, tensed, his fingertips pressing on the backs of his hands and flushing white-red.

She put a hand in her hair. "I. I don't know. I know…I know I want to, I know he makes me happy. But…I don't know if I. It's too soon."

"Too soon?"

"James, he…"

Sirius plucked the fag out of his mouth and, blowing one last breath of smoke out his nostrils, stubbed it out in the tray on the table.

"Lily," he reached out a hand to her wrist, pulling her fingers from her tresses. "James is dead. I know you loved him, love him, and so did I. But he, of all people, wouldn't want you to put your life on hold mourning him like this."

She met his gaze and bit her lower lip. She regarded him for some time, trying to ascertain his sincerity. "Do you really mean it?"

He pressed his lips together and furrowed his brow, like he was the bearer of extremely terrible and sad news. "I…I do. I mean it."

She felt a tear tug at the corner of her eye. She twisted her wrist so that her fingers threaded with his. "Love you, Dogface."

"Love you, Lilypad."

And he reached forward to brush a tear and a lock of hair from her face, his tender gesture noted by only one member of the Hogwarts staff, who, until that very moment, had been having a strangely wonderful day (punch in the face aside), and had agreed to come out with a few of the other professors for Pub Quiz Night.

He excused himself from their company, citing a sudden remembered issue which had to be addressed immediately.

McGonagall, who was sure she would've won the pool placed on her capability to drink the Potions Master under the table, was most put-out. "Severus!"

Lily looked up at the shouted name, and saw nothing but a closing door and the tail flutter of black robes.

"Shit."

Sirius turned to where she was looking.

"What?"

"That was Sev."

Sirius looked at their twined hands on the table, which was, to his mild disappointment, utterly platonic and simply comforting, but, he had to admit, could definitely be interpreted otherwise. He took his hand from hers, and looked at her with a sort of defeat in his eyes.

"Go."

She didn't reply, and didn't even pick up her jacket she'd left behind.

# # # # #

"Severus!"

He didn't reply, just continued down the street, and she wondered briefly why he didn't just apparate away from her.

"Severus!"

"Go away Lily!" He yelled into the crisping evening air.

"Severus, wait!" She quickened her step, and he continued to stalk at a hurried pace, but she was determined to catch up with him. She reached him, and grabbed his arm, turning him towards her.

"I told you to go away," he said darkly, and pulled his arm from her grasp, and made to continue on his way.

She grabbed his arm again.

"No! Listen to me!"

He whirled on her, his pupils so large in the waning light that his eyes were no longer that deep dark chocolate that she loved to stare into – now they looked completely black.

"What could you _possibly_ have to say that I would want to listen to?" He rasped.

"Sev, please."

"Stop calling me that!" He leaned in close to her face, as though his words were not menace enough.

"No, _listen _to me!"

He inhaled, and leaned backwards, crossing his arms across his chest, tucking his hands in at his elbows. He did not speak.

"Sev…"

"If this is going to be a speech about how what I saw wasn't really what I thought I saw and how it meant nothing and I need to forgive and forget, _you_ can forget it," he unfolded one arm and pointed a finger at her.

She reached out to touch him, to ground herself in him to sort out her words, but he shied away from her.

"It wasn't what you thought, and while it did mean something, it's not the something you thought, and no, I don't want you to forgive me, because I've done nothing wrong."

He snorted and turned to walk away.

"Wait!"

"_What_ Lily? What?" He threw his arms in the air, and she winced at the hopelessness of his body language. "I've watched, again and again, as you've run into the arms of someone else. Someone, anyone, besides me. Everyone except me. I…I don't want to do this anymore."

"No, that is _not_ what you saw. What you saw was _me _being _consoled_ by a friend…"

"That was some awfully touchy consolation," he remarked bitterly.

"He was _consoling _me because…"

"I know he loves you, Lily, I know it. And I don't want to hear how you feel. I don't."

"Would you _listen _to me?! Let me finish a sodding sentence!"

He pulled his head back, surprised by her language.

"As I was trying to tell you," her voice softened and she reached out to take his hand, and he let her. "I'd just had one of those revelations about our relationship…"

"Doomed, right? I could have told you that," he said quietly, looking at their hands, and emphatically not at her.

"What? No. Is that…is that what you think?"

"What else could I think? He was touching you, like that, and he…the way he…I wanted to kill a man for the first time in…right then, Lily. I wanted to kill another human being, and Merlin knows I've done enough of that to last ten lifetimes." He turned away from her, folding his arms over his chest again, and she saw him bend his head down. His words were carried back to her. "I just felt so _angry_ at being abandoned, _again_."

The back of her mind was strangely thankful for their years apart. He'd never talked so much about his feelings then as when they argued now.

"_Sevvv. Tell meeee."_

"_No."_

_She leaned back out of his personal space and pouted. "You know, I can't sort out why we're friends. Getting you to tell me anything is like pulling hen's teeth."_

"_Hens don't have teeth."_

_She held up a finger. "Correction. They do. Sort of." She opened her mouth in demonstration. "They have this little ridge, right here," her speech was impeded by a hooked finger in her cheek._

"_Not actual teeth. I win."_

_She leaned back on her calves. "Why won't you tell me what's wrong?"_

"_Because I don't want to see that look on your face."_

"_What look on my face?"_

"_That look you get when you're feeling sorry for me."_

"_I get a look?"_

"_Definitely. And I'd rather our time spent together involved less of that look. Makes me feel like you just stick around to feel sorry for me."_

_She furrowed her brow and reached for his hand. It was clammy, like it so often was. He pulled from her grasp. She was mildly disappointed, but never expected anything more._

"_You know I don't stick around just because I feel sorry for you."_

"_You don't, huh?" He sounded as though he didn't believe her._

"_No."_

"_Then why do you?"_

"_Isn't it obvious?"_

_He looked genuinely confused. "Huh?"_

"_You're _such _a charmer, how could I resist?" She flipped her hair, looking pleased as a cat that had gotten into the cream._

_He just stared at her, and made a sound in the back of his throat that was the best reply she was ever going to get, and stuck his face back in his book._

"_You're really not going to tell me?"_

"_No. Aren't you supposed to be studying for Charms?"_

"_Pfft. I'll ace it."_

"_Of course you will."_

She walked around to him, and unfolded his arms and wrapped herself in them, pressing her cheek to his chest. He was agreeably pliant, but did not tighten his hold on her, simply left his arms where she'd put them.

"You were right."

"Right? I don't think I want to be."

"He was in love with me."

"And you?"

"And me what?"

"Are you in love with him?"

She looked up at him. "No."

"Oh."

She reached an arm up to touch his cheek. She turned his face down to look down at her. "How could I be? I'm in love with you, silly."

He studied her, his eyes narrowed, and his brow furrowed. She tried not to laugh, for he looked rather like a hawk when he did that.

"What?"

"Are you going to make me say it again?"

"I can't be sure I heard you right."

"I love you."

And then he kissed her, and he didn't care who saw.


	17. Chapter 17

A/N: Some fluff. And one more for the road. My outline has been left far behind, so I can only guess at the number of chapters we'll have left. Less than ten, I think. But more than five, maybe. This lack of outline also might explain why this story is kinda all over the place. I hope I'm still making sense, writing in English, and all that. You get two chapters right off, because I'm going to LA and not working on this for the next three days. Figured I'd make up for lack of progress in dearth of published chapters.

* * *

She felt rather like a teenager some days.

While she might be snapped out of her reverie occasionally by a rapidly growing very-nearly-three year old, she would sooner, rather than later, be thrown back into it when a certain Potions Master Flooed in from his office fireplace just to scoop her up in his arms, often surprising a yelp out of her that she insisted would get the neighbors talking.

She realizes that she can still blush, and deeply, from toes to the roots of her hair when he whispers in her ear, his voice having a deeper intonation than she remembered from their school days.

She wonders how he knows when she is home – it's not always suppertime, as she putters around with Harry, when he shows up. Sometimes it's late morning, or mid-afternoon, on her half-days or days off. He shows up just to give her a kiss and tell her he misses her. She wonders how he knows she is home.

Sometimes he comes over on a weekend, just to spend the night sleeping beside her. She wonders how his skinny form feels so safe – and she smiles in the darkness, his arm draped over her, at the fact that she went from Sirius (who was the thickest of them, though by no means large – just larg_er_) to James (who was spindly, but had Quidditch muscles) to Severus, who is just slim. She wonders if maybe she's growing up, really growing up, and needs less to protect her.

He's not underfed or malnourished or sickly. He's just…narrow. She thinks sometimes he could do with putting on a little weight – sometimes his hip bones are uncomfortable when they sleep, poking her in her own hip when she lies encircled in his arm.

And sometimes, she lets her parents spoil her son for an entire weekend just so she can spend it in bed.

# # # # #

Lily lay awkwardly between Severus's legs, her elbows propped on his knees, her book tilted down in front of her, and her head resting on his stomach. Her legs are tangled with his as they stretch out on the couch.

Above her head, Severus held his book up, so as not to clonk her, and he kept shifting, but never said a word, switching the book from hand to hand and angling his shoulders to get comfortable.

"You alright up there?"

"Mmm."

"I could move."

"You could."

"Want me to?"

"No, it's oka…no, actually if you could just sit up a second? I think you're displacing my hips."

She smiled and sat up, letting him get comfortable again, and ended up with her book propped against one knee that he has pulled up.

They sat in companiable silence for long stretches of minutes, the only sound of turning pages, and swallowing saliva, and when the ticking of the clock doesn't seem so loud, Lily thinks she can hear the whisp of his eyelashes when he blinks.

"Sev?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you happy?"

She heard him use a finger to mark his place, closing the book. "Why do you ask?"

"I just…I just wonder. I mean, you don't…laugh."

"You think I'm unhappy because I don't laugh?"

She can't turn and look at him without injuring other parts of his anatomy that she rather would not be terribly affected, so she just stared down at her pages, unseeing.

"Lily, I don't know how much you remember of our childhood, but laughing really isn't something…isn't something I do."

"But don't you think you should?"

"I _am_ happy. Still getting used to the idea, but I am. I'm sure of it." He kissed the top of her head, and she tilted it, her eyes closed, and the next kiss lands on her temple. The next was placed on her neck, just behind and below her ear.

Books forgotten, she is almost late waking up her son from his nap so that he will still sleep the night through.

# # # # #

Of all the things Lily Potter might've predicted could go wrong with her life, she honestly could never have predicted what happened that night. Later, she would suppose she should have, like this is the last glaring issue that they hadn't hashed over hundreds of thousands of times. In fact, that alone - that they've never _discussed_ it, should have given her pause.

But Lily Potter was remembering what it was like to be happy.

And she didn't pay attention to the arguments they _weren't _having.

# # # # #

"Harry, just a minute, Mummy will take you up to bed in just a minute."

"Sleepy, mummy."

"Yes, poppet. I know you're sleepy. And we'll get you all snuggled up! Aha!" She reached down to tickle his ribs, and he cringed and giggled, but it was a sign of his fatigue that it was just a short, quiet giggle rather than a screech. He was so ticklish, her son, and while her eardrums might not forgive his screeching, she loved to hear it. It made her happy.

She peeked out into the other room, where Severus sat on the couch with his wine glass, swirling it absentmindedly as he read one of the many books which he left littered about her house.

"Harry, sweetie, go on out," she nodded her head away from the dishes she was rinsing, towards the other room, where the staircase was half-hidden behind a partition. "Go out and wait for mummy at the stairs. I'll be right out."

He turned from her, and shuffled into the living room, tipping his three year old head backwards in exasperation.

She rinsed the last dish, and placed it in the drying rack. She reached for the towel when she heard it.

"Daddy," the little boy intoned, and reached up for Severus sleepily, opening and closing his hands. Severus just stared, and his face paled to a shade bordering albinism.

Collecting herself, she strode from the sink to the doorway, observing Severus very still in his pose on her couch, and Harry looking confused, bordering frustrated, that he hadn't been picked up and taken in to bed. Lily froze.

"_Park?"_

"_Yes, sweetie. We're going to the park."_

_Suddenly Harry wasn't so averse to being stuffed into his woolly jumper. He could just barely reach the doorknob, and began pawing it at it futilely, as though it would quicken their departure._

_He loved the park. She took him every chance she got – he ran on chubby short legs to the seesaw, and inevitably made a friend to share it._

_That day, his friend was a little blonde-haired boy named Everett._

_Everett jumped down off the seesaw when his butt touched the ground, the imbalance sending her tot careening down. He bumped rather roughly, and looked like he might cry, when Everett yelled out._

"_Daddy!"_

_Harry ambled off the seesaw, under his mother's watchful eye, and went after Everett. Everett hugged the taller man's knees, and said "daddy, daddy" over and over again. Harry stepped to them, and looked up at the man._

"_Daddy?" He inquired, as though establishing this was the man's name. Lily got up from the bench and went to scoop up her son._

"_No! Mine!" Everett was suddenly possessive of the knees he hugged, and shot Harry a look. He was confused, but was then rescued by his mother._

"_Sorry about that," she tried to laugh at the other man, who reached down and ruffled his son's hair._

"_Everett, be nice. Say sorry to this little boy."_

"_Harry," she supplied._

"_Say sorry to Harry."_

"_Sorry, Harry," mumbled the other boy._

_The man looked up at Lily. "Oh, don't worry about it. Kids," he said with a laugh and lifted his one hand as though to say 'who can tell?'. She smiled, and nodded at him, and carried her son off._

"_Daddy?" He looked back around her arm at the other man, who was now tickling Everett into breathless giggles._

"_No, that's Everett's daddy."_

"_My daddy?"_

"_Your daddy…" she did not expect to have this conversation right yet. Not yet. "Your daddy has gone away, Harry."_

_Harry nodded decisively, as though he understood and accepted this concept. Then he stuck his thumb in his mouth, and leaned his head against his mother's chest._

Lily shot a look at the man on the couch, and in two strides, had scooped her child up from behind, and then headed towards the staircase, taking him into his room.

When she returned, several minutes later, the blood had still not returned to Severus' face.

He had leaned forward on the couch, and his elbows were resting on his knees, his fingers steepled and his face resting on the triangle of index fingers and thumbs.

"I'm sorry about that," she said quietly, and sat down next to him, giving him ample space to escape.

He took a deep breath and looked at her. His mouth opened, and then shut abruptly, and she heard the sound of his teeth meeting with the force of his jaw. He turned away from her, resting his face on his fingers again.

She just sat there, half a cushion away from him, alternately staring at him, and then at the floor, her hands twisting in her lap. She didn't know what to say.

Then he rose abruptly.

"Severus."

"I can't do this, Lily," he said, turned away from her, and he took a stride towards the door.

"Can't do what? Can't do what?" She had risen, and wanted to go after him, to grab him by the arm and make him look at her.

"I can't be this. I won't take up any more of your time. I can't be the man you need. I can't be…I can't be a…_father_."

After all the time they'd spent together, it seemed as though there were some things they still couldn't communicate, some things they still kept from each other, things they didn't understand. Her mind leapt to conclusions, her anger instantly sparked at the thought of someone _not _loving her son as she did. Instead of thinking back on the conversations they'd had as children, about his own father, she thought he was mad because Harry was James's son. James, whom he still hated a little bit; James whom she still loved. She stared at his back, flush rising on her face, and he did not turn to look at her, no matter how much he knew she was burning holes in his robes with her gaze.

"What are you talking about? What do you think you've been doing? Not that I said 'here, play father-figure to my son', but you _have been doing it!_" She paused, trying to sort out how to rationally address this, but somehow only came up with more angry jabs, wondering, in the back of her mind, how she had let herself become this simmering pot of frustration when it came to her relationship with this man. "You can't be a father to him because he's James's son? Is that it? You still hate him so much you can't stand to look at his son because he's a reminder of what you threw away? You've been down here, what, five minutes? Did you come to this conclusion in _five minutes_?"

He really didn't want to argue. He never wanted to argue. He wanted something, anything, in his life to go _right_ for once. What was the good in getting a second chance if he couldn't even do that?

He snorted, and her temper flared.

_I can't believe he's laughing at me._

"Is this ever not about James Potter."

"Are you sure about that?" She didn't sound convinced.

"That's not it at all," he replied quietly.

And he took one more step, and reached for the door knob. She stood in silence; her fists clenched at her sides, and watched him leave her house, closing the door softly behind him.

# # # # #

"What're you doing here so late? Thought you would've gone home by now."

Severus did not look up from his desk, where he was finalizing a supplies list for the headmaster. "Home is right there," he said distractedly, and pointed with his quill at a door on the other side of his office, leading to a decently sized room that he hadn't slept in in months.

"I meant Lily," Remus said quietly.

"I know."

"You two have another row?"

Severus did not answer.

"Severus, you _can _talk to me, you know."

He was quiet again; the only sound in the silence was his quill scratching on the paper.

Remus Lupin was a man who could take a hint, even if he would rather not. So he just nodded once, did not say his goodbye, and ducked out of the office, closing the door behind him.

# # # # #

"What do you want, Lupin?"

It was a Saturday, and instead of enjoying his time to himself, like every other professor, Remus Lupin had knocked on his door, bearing tea.

"Just brought some tea, is all."

"I see that. Go away. Take your tea with you. I am perfectly capable of brewing tea."

"No."

Severus looked up from his desk, where this time, he'd been interrupted sorting his lesson plan for the following week.

"No?"

"No. You've got to talk to _someone_."

Severus put down his quill decisively and folded his hands on his desk. He watched as Remus stepped forward, and sat the tea service on a chair before stepping back and crossing his arms over his chest.

"No, actually, I don't. You can leave now. Thanks but no thanks."

"Severus."

"What, Lupin? What do you _want _from me? Go _away_!"

"What, and let you ruin your life?"

"Yes. As you so aptly put it, it is _my _life. Run along now."

And Remus Lupin left again – wondering whatever happened in the life of Severus Snape to make him so adverse to offers of friendship. True, their schooldays weren't the kindest, but it wasn't as if missiles weren't fired from both sides. And they were adults now, complete with grown-up sorts of mentalities…right?

"_That bloody fuckin'…I'm going to eviscerate him this time! And I went and told Lily that she deserved happiness! I even went so far as to agree that _he _could _make _her happy! I _knew _this would happen!"_

"_Sirius, calm down."_

"_Don't you 'calm down Sirius' me, Remus J. Lupin!" Sirius whirled on him and pointed a finger in his face. Remus held up two hands in surrender, but did not cringe under the rage of his friend that was, from personal experience, dangerous enough to cringe from._

"_Sirius, this is not something we need to get involved in. Severus," he began._

"_Oh, so it's _Severus _now, is it?! What the hell has happened here, Moony? Am I the only sane person left in this place?! Since when were you on _his _team?!"_

"_I am not on his team, Sirius. I am on Lily's team, as, you may remember, are you. We're her cast of 'fight the good fight'ers," he started again._

"_Exactly! And that fight just _begs _for Snivellus's big fat schnoz to be graced with my knuckle sandwich!" He shook a fist in demonstration._

_Remus grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him once brusquely – rather difficult under most circumstances, as Sirius outweighed him by at least a stone. Likely two. But the curse in Remus Lupin's blood allowed him a deal more strength than someone of his narrowness might otherwise possess._

"_Listen to me. This is not about you, this is not about me. This is about Lily. If you want her to be happy, just be there for her. And I don't mean be there for her like she's available. I mean," Sirius interrupted again._

"_Merlin! Tell me what you _really _think of me, Moony! Tell me you think I'm a right twat, who is _happy _that his friend is heartbroken and will, of course, take the first chance to jump her emotionally weakened bones!"_

_Remus held onto his shoulders, but Sirius shrugged his hands off, looking for all the world like he might go have a sulk. But Remus Lupin was a master of the Calm Voice of Reason. And it even worked on Sirius Black most days._

"_Sirius, listen to me."_

"_No."_

"_You know that's not what I meant, so zip it. You can't encourage her to give up, even though you hate him. _And _you can't go punching him in the face again – you see how well that worked last time."_

"_Actually, thankyouverymuch, in terms of her relationship, she should thank me. It worked wonderfully, if you recall," he said dryly, unhappily remembering the sound of their kisses._

"_And you were in her good graces again right away, were you?" He had crossed his arms across his chest and raised an eyebrow._

_Sirius didn't comment._

"_That's what I thought. Now. _I _will go talk to Severus, because you are very obviously so volatile as to be of no use whatsoever."_

"_I thought you said this was something we shouldn't interfere in?"_

"_I meant more like the royal we, and referring singularly to you."_

"_Of course."_

_Remus patted his arm once, in that professorly manner of his that annoyed Sirius to no end. "If it's going to work out, it will work out. If it's not, well, we've just got to be there for the fallout. Okay? Deal?"_

"_Whatever."_

"_That's my boy."_

"_Don't ever call me that."_

"_Don't make me pinch your cheek."_

"_Do, and you lose an arm."_

"_I am so proud of you," Remus said, in his best old Auntie voice, and reached forward, pinching Sirius's cheek._

_He did not lose an arm._

_It was a mark of their friendship, really._

* * *

A/N: I've obviously been reading too much Shoebox Project. (If you don't know it, go, go now! Read and love!) That Remus and Sirius almost got Remus/Sirius ifyouknowwhatimsayin...and Remus is such a smartass. I don't know how it happened. Then again, if you were friends with James and Sirius, I think it'd eventually rub off.


	18. Chapter 18

"Talk to him, Lily."

"Why? He's given up. Why should I put forth the effort? I've done nothing but give here, Remus. He's afraid of people, he's afraid of affection, he's afraid of love, he's afraid of us, he's afraid of commitment. I can't support us both. I can't. I'm tired."

Remus pulled his friend into a hug as they sat on her settee, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and pulling her to his chest, setting his chin on the top of her head. Then he moved so his cheek was pressed to her hair, to avoid jogging her brains when he spoke.

"Lily, he's miserable. I know. Well, more miserable than he usually is. And I know you only get to see fluffy bunny Severus…"

Lily couldn't help but let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort.

"But the rest of us have to deal with his ornery self every day. Or well, at least play nice with his ornery self during tea and staff meetings. And, well, he's _less _ornery when he's getting on with you. Can't you two limit your heated arguments to ones that end in makeup sex? It would be better for the rest of us too, you see. Taking one for the team and all."

She did the snort-laugh again. "It really grossed Sirius out thinking about our makeup sex."

"It grosses me out. But thankfully, years of his company have allowed me to develop this," he took one arm from across her chest and waved it about in the air, searching for the word. "This _filter_, really, on my mental imaging capabilities. Things which Might Definitely Scar Me For Life are ever so kindly blocked out with big grey-black blobs."

"How helpful."

"Imperative, really. Did you ever meet Sirius Black? How about your husband? Sickos, the both of them. Intent on scarring me for life, I'm convinced," he said with a smile. It was the first time he'd spoken of James in a long time without wanting to cry. Well, tears did prick the corners of his eyes when memories flooded his mind, but he kept the smile. They were happy memories.

They were silent for a few minutes, and he felt her take in a deep breath and exhale.

"What do I say?" She asked quietly.

"Just tell him you love him and that sort of sappy shite. Isn't that what you people do?"

"We _people_?"

"Yes, you blissfully happy romantical types."

She was quiet for a minute, and she pulled out of his embrace. "I've had bits of happy, Remus, but it was never 'blissful'. It seems like any moment a big fat shoe is going to drop right on me, killing all chance for happiness."

"Rather sounds like what happened."

"Yeah. Except for this is not the first shoe in a long line of what is surely a very large bin of shoes, boots, and other footwear that Fate lobs cheerily in the direction of me and my pursuit of happiness."

"What a lovely metaphor."

"Thanks."

"But seriously."

"Don't call me Sirius."

Remus let out a short bark of laughter, followed by a very stern expression. "I can't believe you just said that."

"It's been awhile."

"Yeah. But," he chose his words more carefully, "_honestly_, Lily. Are you willing to give it another chance? Because I'm not going to encourage you to if you're ready to let it go. There are other fish in the sea, as they say. But I thought you seemed happy, and I'm sorry I never realized how…volatile things were."

"It's just that he's got so many little insecurities, and I really should be more understanding, but I let it build and build and build and then I explode at him, which only pushes him farther away, and then I have to rebuild my burned bridges, and yeah, it takes less time each time, but I wonder when I became so bitter?"

"How so?"

"Just…" she bit her lip in thought, and got up from the couch, running her hands into her hair in exasperation. "I _know_, here," she put a closed fist on her chest, "that sorting us out was the right thing to do, and that I need to be gentle with him because no one ever _has _been. But…but I want someone to care about _me_, Remus! I'm a delicate person too! I never was, I _never was_, but then I lost the love of my life, and his son, his _son_," she was starting to cry, and Remus wanted desperately to hold her again, tell her it would be okay, but unlike Sirius, he recognized her need to speak her peace. "His son just…he looks more and more like James," now the tears were becoming sobs, "like James _every day_, Remus. Every day. And I miss him. I miss him every day, and I want, I wanted someone to coddle _me, _to tell _me, _that it would be okay, that he would be there for me, and _he_ could be the strong one and hold us together, because some days it's…" she stopped to inhale a deep breath, trying to calm herself down, and then let out a laugh, one hand on her hip, one in her hair. She looked away, biting her lip, and inhaled again. "Some days, it's just so hard, because, I don't know why, because he won't _tell _me, he just clams right up. Some days he smiles, and smiles a lot, and it's wonderful, but then some days he just doesn't participate, like today he got a "pass" from the Relationship Gods to be a total prat, and I can't take the back and forth anymore. I can't take walking on eggshells wondering if it's a bad day or not. And sometimes, yeah, I have my bad days too, and he just shies away from me, like he's afraid to touch me or something, and then we argue, because all I want is for someone to _hold me_ and he thinks that a bad mood is something to be avoided like the plague. And I hold it against him, because I just want someone to be concerned about _my feelings_ for once."

"May I offer a suggestion?"

"What?"

"He doesn't _know_ you, Lily. You've been putting on this brave face," he stood from the couch, and used his hand to cup her cheek, his thumb wiping away tear tracks. "You've been so brave, and maybe, maybe he's used to that. Maybe he's used to you being the brave one, the glue, if you will. And if you're trying so hard, maybe he really does need to be hit over the head instead of subtlety hinted at."

She sniffed, and just hugged him, speaking into his shirt.

"I just. I don't know if I can anymore, Remus."

"You can't tell me James wasn't work."

She laughed, muffled by his ever-wrinkled oxford. "Oh no, James was work. James was definitely work. But," she inhaled, and leaned away, so she wasn't speaking into his sternum. "But he was a whole different kind of work. If I asked a question, he answered it – with complete and utter sincerity. Sometimes that wasn't his best idea ever, but he made me _laugh_, and that made up for the times when we weren't getting on."

"Severus doesn't make you laugh?"

She shook her head. "No, well, yes, sometimes, but mostly it's not on purpose, like he expects me to wallow with him in his broody emotions and instead I can't help but laugh."

"So your time with us was well spent, excellent. I feel strangely proud," he said with a smile. She managed to give him a little smile in return. Then she sighed, and hugged him again.

"I just wish…I just wish he wasn't so…closed."

Remus wasn't sure what to say, really, because it wasn't like he knew Severus Snape that well either. So instead, he tried to sound worldly and make conclusions based entirely on years of library loyalty.

"Maybe he doesn't know how to be any other way, Lils. Maybe you just need to pry, that little bit more. Maybe it makes him angry, but then again, maybe he _needs_ to really get at those emotions that he shuts away underneath the façade of sarcasm and general uncooperative ornery git-ness."

She laughed. "You sound like a psychiatrist."

"I do believe I read it in a psychology textbook," he replied, tilting his head as though to recall it specifically.

She laughed into his shirt again, and he rubbed her back twice quickly, and pulled her away from his chest, their hands sliding together.

"It's up to you, Lily. You know we're here for you, right? You're our girl," he said with a smile, and squeezed her hands.

"Thanks Remus. I always knew you were the sensible one."

"Damn right. If I let the Sirius Blacks of the world take any true place of power, we'd all be lost."

# # # # #

"_Hey, what's wrong my lovely?"_

_She shrugged off his touch. "Nothing. Bad day, is all."_

"_How so?" He stood behind her, slipped his arms around her waist, and laid his head on her shoulder._

_She tried to shrug him off again. He took the hint, but wasn't happy about it._

"_I just asked what was wrong! What is your _problem_?"_

"_I'm sorry not everyone can be so cheerful about our friends _dying_, James!"_

"_Hey," he held his hands up in surrender. "Since when did you think I was cheerful about any of this mess?"_

"_Every night you go out carousing with Sirius and those Prewetts," she started._

"_Gideon and Fabian," he offered._

"_And you have a jolly old time down at the pub with your Quidditch games and your drinks!" She stormed off to the other side of the kitchen and began to take her ire out on an onion._

_He was trying not to get angry at her accusations, but the flush crept up his neck._

"_Lily, wha-wh…" he fumbled for the words, trying to sort out if he was trying to ask "what's gotten into you" or "why are you so fired up about a few drinks?"_

"_There's a war going on, James, right outside that very door," she nodded her head towards their entryway, and continued to chop haphazardly._

"_I'm aware of that," he crossed his arms across his chest, but she continued to rave, heedless of his interjection._

"_And I'm scared, and I'm angry and I can't bear to see anyone else get hurt! Next time! Next time it might be you! Or Sirius! Or Remus! I can't! Argh!" She chopped roughly, and managed to nick herself good. She let out a hiss and put her finger in her mouth, almost biting herself in her frustration._

_James went to the sink, and wet a dishrag and walked over to his wife, taking her hand gently from her mouth and wrapping the cool dishrag around the wound, and holding it tight, using the pressure of his grip to staunch the blood flow, minor though it was. He did it all in complete silence._

"_I'm pregnant."_

_He jerked his head up to look at her, and it was first shock, then a grin spread across his face, and her wound forgotten, he let out a whoop and grabbed her around the waist, twirling her around the kitchen. He put her down, and took her face in his hands, meaning to give her a kiss that she would remember to tell this child of theirs about._

_But she was having none of it._

"_Lily. You're happy, right? I mean, I'm…I'm definitely happy, and you're making me feel like I shouldn't be," he tried to keep the hurt out of his voice, but it showed on his face instead._

_She pulled out of his grasp, and turned her back on him._

"_What if next time it's Remus, or Sirius…or _you_?" She whispered. "What am I going to do without you? What is your child going to do without you?"_

_This time when he slid his arms around her waist and pulled her backwards into his chest, she didn't resist. The fight had gone out of her, leaving nothing but fear and worry._

"_Lily, our child will never be without me, because nothing is going to happen to me. I'll be fine, I always am," he confided softly._

"_But James…"_

"_No. Don't think on it another minute. Not another _second_. We're going to have a _baby_, Lily! Just think about it. Your lovely red locks, my sexy deep pools of soulful brown…eyes," he ended awkwardly, and she let out a small giggle. "See? It's okay. It's going to be all right."_

_She turned in his arms, and stared into his sexy deep pools of soulful brown. She kissed him softly once, and then slid her arms around him, settling into his embrace. "I'm sorry. I just...I don't want to think about it, I never do, but then, that's all I've been thinking of for a full week."_

"_You've known for a week?"_

"_Sort of. Doctor confirmed it this morning. But she had that look about her, and I just knew it, and all I could think was how…was what I would do without you? How would I raise her alone?"_

"_Her? Hardly. The Potters only breed strapping young lads. I'm going to have a son who is born for Quidditch, right out of the womb," he insisted, and she giggled._

"_I thought ginger blokes always got the short end of the stick?"_

"_Absolutely not. He's going to be a Potter! That name alone will assure the world that, ginger or not, he's the hero this world has been waiting for!" He deepened his voice and threw out a hand, pantomiming greatness._

_She snorted into his button-up shirt. "Quidditch hero?"_

"_Oh definitely. But all around hero, too. Hero with the ladies, hero on the pitch, and with my brains, and your, well, yes, your brains too," he smiled and she flicked his back where her hands still lay. "With our _collective _brains, he'll be smart and, with my sense of humor, he'll be funny, and alas, if he has your temper, he'll probably also spend a great deal of time in the headmaster's office," he said pensively._

"_Hey, I wasn't in the headmaster's office that much!"_

"_Lily Potter. It shocked me to my very core that you became Head Girl. You were a Marauder before we ever accepted you into our ranks."_

"_Takes one to know one."_

"_Yes, but as I was _already _a Marauder in good standing, my antics were looked upon as fine examples of boyhood. You, on the other hand, you were trouble waiting to happen."_

"_Har har."_

"_Ahem. As I was saying," he lifted his hand again and furrowed his brow in concentration. "Hero on the pitch, hero in the classroom, hero with the ladies, and damn funny to boot. We are simply going to produce a miracle child. There will be no competition."_

"_He'll break hearts."_

"_Definitely. But he'll be so nice about it afterwards that they'll forgive him immediately."_

"_They will?"_

"_Of course!"_

"_And what position will he play in Quidditch?"_

"_Seeker, naturally! Boy'll take after his old man, for sure!"_

"_And what will you call him? For I'm certain you can't go around calling him 'Boy'."_

"_I shall call him…Thor!"_

"_No."_

"_Why not?! Thor is a name of power! He is a king among Gods! And has something very much to do with being terribly smart as well."_

"_I am not naming my child 'Thor'."_

"_You didn't ask me what I thought _you _would name him! You asked me what _I _would name him! You'd probably name him something poncey like Ashley or Lindsay."_

"_Those are lovely names!"_

"_Poncey. Ponce ponce poncey-ponce!"_

"_Fine. But you don't get to name him Thor," she began and James opened his mouth, "and we're not naming him after a Quidditch player or any member of Dragon Gavotte," she continued._

"_But they've all got very normal names! Like Keith and Oliver and…"_

"_And?"_

"_Jörgenbjorn."_

"_We're not naming him that either."_

"_I suppose not. It is an awful mouthful. Jörgenbjorn Potter."_

"_We'll name him later."_

"_Fine. Fine," he relented, and tightened his embrace, kissing her on the forehead. "You've nothing to worry about, my lovely. You're going to get horribly fat with my child, and we're going to love every minute of it, and nothing is ever going to happen to me, so you can begin right now by wolfing down jaffa cakes, assured of my continued affections and pulse, even if you have to do something pregnant-woman-y like smother them with chicken gravy…"_

"_Eew."_

"_Pregnant ladies do that, you know."_

"_Smother jaffa cakes in chicken gravy?"_

"_Absolutely. And other such nonsensical food combinations. I'm sure everything you eat will hideously disgust me."_

"_Well then it's a good thing I have a guarantee of your continued affections."_

"_Of course. But I don't want to see you eating weird things. Then I'll just want to puke, and I don't want to hold it against you," he warned._

"_Deal," she said with a smile._

* * *

A/N: I think Lily is channeling me. I want Remus snuggles, she gets Remus snuggles. I want Sirius lovin', she gets Sirius hand-holdin', I start to develop a bitty crush on James via Shoebox Project, and suddenly James appears. Actually, there's a purpose to the James. And since I'm going to shut up and stop explaining myself, I'll just leave it at that. (And no, the purpose was not just to throw around fun Viking-esque names. Though that was definitely fun.) Next chapter: The Talk. And from there, we begin our descent towards this vague thing called The End.


	19. Chapter 19

A/N: Well my excuses for being gone for like, 25% of a calendar year are many and varied. If you've been following my personal saga, I started to publish this story just after I moved 3000 miles across the US of A from New York to sunny so-Cali. Job in hand, I lost my internets mid-July. Moved to a new place in August, got into a car accident in September, and lost my job in October. So my creative flow was kind of choked off, much less my actual access to the internet to actually post anything, had I pulled myself together enough to, you know, WRITE SOMETHING. I feel really really bad for just stopping and not offering explanation. I re-read some old chapters, and am kind of appalled at my strange grammatical style. I seem to have a problem with voice. Luckily, as I've said before, there were huge sections of this story that were written in a jumble and I just needed to sort out how to put it back together. I'm sorting. In the meantime, I have managed to obtain internet access for a short period of time, and will provide you with three chapters in apology. And then when I finish this story, I'll move on. I have to say, the HP muse disappeared a few months ago, but with the reevaluation of the "bits of ", have begun to give you the story again. Did I mention this thing runs amok with itself and that it's really not the one I started to write all that time ago? Yeah. Hope there are still a few of you here with me. My next attack is on the great subject of "The West Wing". Joshua Lyman is love. But right now, let's focus on the angst that is Sev/Lily, eh?

* * *

The Order had cornered Bellatrix LeStrange in the Black's old homestead, Grimmauld Place, and had set enchantments on it prohibiting her escape.

Dumbledore commented that it must surely be a sign that her madness had taken a toll that a witch as powerful and Dark as she had not suspected such a possibility and that it was so easily done.

With a few murmured chants, the protection on the townhouse shimmered and popped, allowing the Order to enter right through the front door.

Sirius stepped over the threshold with a look of disgust on his face.

"I hate this place."

"Perhaps you'd rather wait outside then, Sirius?"

He looked at Dumbledore, his nose still wrinkled. "Of course not."

"Hmm." Dumbledore assented, and gestured for the party to split up, as Bellatrix was obviously not within line of sight, to take the rooms and winding hallways two by two.

Sirius held his hand out. "Lily, with me."

She pressed her lips together, suppressing fury that her friend would do this, here, now.

"No, no, I'll go with her, Sirius," Remus offered, and she wasn't sure if she was glad or shocked.

That left Sirius and Severus, as everyone else had done as they were told, and not dallied around like ten year olds picking footie teams.

She nodded at Remus, and quickly reached out and took his hand, giving it quick squeeze of thanks before they headed up the stairs. Severus heard her voice whisper "lumos" before she was out of earshot.

Severus and Sirius stared at each other for a moment, before Severus headed down the right hand hallway.

"You twit, you don't know where you're going."

Severus stopped in the hallway and turned his head to look at the other man. "It's just a house, I think I can manage."

"Dumbledore told us to split off in twos."

Severus turned around fully this time and crossed his arms across his chest, looking smug. "And you want nothing more than to defend me against the evils of a _house_? I'm touched, Black, really I am." He moved a hand to his chest in mock appreciation.

Sirius opened his mouth to spit out a retort when a screech echoed through the house. He looked up, and with a moment's deliberation, seemed to determine the location it sprang from.

"Come on!" He rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and Severus followed him, their tiff forgotten.

They climbed up and up, around staircases which grew tighter and tighter, and then, in front of them on the landing, was a ladder covered in cobwebs that hung menacingly in the semi-darkness, leading up into pitch black.

"Come on, up this way," Sirius said without looking backwards, holding tight on his wand as he clambered up the rungs.

Severus followed and they found the room already occupied with Mad-Eye Moody and Alice Longbottom, who looked angrier than he'd ever seen her. She was pointing her wand at Bellatrix, who was hissing at them like a caged animal, her arms spread wide over a table adorned with bits of junk.

Sirius took in the figure of his aunt, who had not survived the last three years well.

Her hair was frizzy and tangled, there were even bits of debris stuck in it. Her eyes, always large and black, were also a little bloodshot, and no amount of poorly applied makeup could cover the dark circles under them. Her dress was ratty, what once could have been a deep black was now a funny dark grey, and the translucent drop sleeves were torn and ragged. He followed the line of sight down to her hands, the fingernails ragged, one or two completely gone, and those that were left having a great deal of dirt or other unidentifiable gunk beneath them. She bared her teeth as she hissed, and they were yellow and brown.

"Get away! Get out! None shall touch him! None!" And she tipped her head back suddenly, letting out another screechy-wail, something she must have learned from a banshee.

Alice's wand was still pointed at her, only slightly trembling now, Alice's face streaked with tears, but her pupils were large and fearsome as the woman she threatened.

Dumbledore had his wand out as well, but he spoke in a calm voice. "Who, Bellatrix? Who shall none of us touch?"

"The Dark Lord!" She hissed.

"The Dark Lord? The Dark Lord is dead, Bellatrix."

"Lies! Lies! He lives! The Dark Lord lives!" And then she cackled, and began to press her palms to the objects so carefully lined up on the table – a slim leatherbound book, a golden locket, a large gleaming object that looked like a pocketwatch, a fat ring with a black stone, a tiara of some sort, and a small golden cup. She scooped up the small locket, and gripped it tightly in her palm, drawing blood which began to run down her wrist.

"That other traitor, he did something with this! He did something! Traitor!"

Everyone stood stock still, and then there was the sound of climbing, and Remus and Lily and Moody and Shacklebolt climbed into the attic.

She hissed and wailed again, her body hovering closer to the remaining objects. She was mere centimeters from them, looking to the world like a deranged hen.

"Bellatrix, what are you talking about? How is the Dark Lord alive? We killed him, Bellatrix. He's dead."

"Liar! Lies! Lies!" She squealed, her voice cracking. "I will bring him back, I will! The Dark Lord loves me as he loves no other!"

"Voldemort is incapable of love."

Her unfocused hissing and cackling was suddenly directed at Dumbledore; she sneered. "Shows what you know. I'm the closest to him, and I will be the one who brings him back. His strength in these objects, his _soul_, and he will rise again! More powerful and more!" As she spoke, she had put her hands on the objects and drawn them together, her head titled to the sky in triumph, and a green light shot out from the crowd and hit her in the chest.

It glimmered over her body, and filtered down to the table, and the objects rattled tremendously, her form slumping forward over them, silencing them.

They all turned in horror towards Alice Longbottom, who lowered her wand slowly, no expression on her face.

"Alice!" Moody rasped.

"She didn't deserve Azkaban," she said quietly, her voice a monotone.

Moody broke through the crowd and took her by the shoulders, shaking her. She still stared at the body slumped on the table.

"Alice, what were you _thinking_! She's to be tried! She would surely be convicted of her crimes, and _punished_!"

Alice turned her face slowly to the Auror, who'd been her friend and companion for many years. "And for what crime is Frank being punished, Alastor?"

He had no answer to that, and just stood staring at her, his hands still gripping her shoulders.

No one spoke.

Dumbledore turned to the staring crowd.

"It's over," he said quietly, and reached out a hand to lay it beside Alastor's on Alice Longbottom's narrow shoulder.

# # # # #

Alastor sent Alice and the rest back downstairs, and Shacklebolt offered to take her home.

"What are you doing, Albus?"

Dumbledore murmured to himself and a flame appeared at the end of his wand.

"If these things are what I think they are, Alastor, then they have to be destroyed. Alice's killing curse may have stunned them, but I doubt they are truly dead."

Alastor looked bewildered. "They're just _junk_, Albus. Let's just get out of here."

Dumbledore turned to look at him, blue eyes meeting one blue and one brown. "I believe Bellatrix _was _trying to bring the Dark Lord back."

"What, with this?" He picked up the cup, and then dropped it, as though it were hot. "What the hell? That was…strange," he said, almost to himself, shaking his head as though to clear it.

"I believe these objects are tainted with Dark magics, and it would be best that they were destroyed."

He turned away, and the flame that had sprouted jumped from his wand in the shape of a mangy wolf, and he continued to mutter, circling his wand around the objects as the wolf sprouted a dragon. Alastor's eyes widened, watching the fiery beasts leap and slide through and over, flickering off the burnished surfaces.

"And so you would _counter_ them with _more_ Dark magic, Albus?" Alastor hissed.

Dumbledore did not reply, his concentration on his mutterings, and Alastor let out a sound of aggravated exhaustion and waved his hand at the man, and disappeared down the ladder.

And then the dragon on the table sprouted a snake, and then the table was full of fiery creatures that began to attack the objects, multiply, and then suddenly discovered they were trapped by some invisible force, not able to expand beyond the table.

The flames melted together and made howling and roaring noises, attacking the protection around the table while their mates devoured the objects on the table.

Then with a last utterance, the animals diminished, and were drawn back into the wand.

On the table lay only ash.

* * *

A/N: Yep. That's how I dealt with the Horcruxes. Maybe a little anticlimactic, but I think it worked quite well. Having not been slithering around all wraith-like for ten years, he never made Nagini a Horcrux. And neither was Harry. They destroyed his body in "Death & Rebirth: Redux", leaving only five of the remaining seven - the journal, Slytherin's locket, Marvolo's ring, Rowena's diadem, and Helga's cup. I hope that what I was doing here, how I was characterizing Bellatrix made sense. She was, excuse my language, batshit crazy, and always fancied herself Voldemort's pet witch. She spent three years trying to figure out a way to bring him back, and then bringing together these objects (including the fake of Regulus's) – obviously her research wasn't as good as Hermione's, because there was really no way (realistically – I'm not going to pretend like Voldemort could have a change of heart) to reunite the objects to "recreate" him, if you will. Your thoughts on this chapter would be very lovely.


	20. Chapter 20

"So, Snivelly, moved back into the dungeons, I see," Sirius taunted from the doorway. Severus gave serious thought to warding his doorways to keep Sirius from lingering in them. A good voltage shock might work, he pondered idly.

"Come back to repeat a class or two, Black? I wouldn't guarantee on passing Muggle Studies this time around – I hear Professor Thorn is a lesbian."

Black looked up at the rafters with a smile. "Ahh, Muggle Studies. Good class, good class. Battle of the Revulsion with the colonies, denim jumpers, Charlie Ricky and the tale of the orphan Ollie…" he trailed off, waving his hand in the air, caught in the memory.

Severus snorted, bringing Sirius out of his reverie.

"Is there a _reason_ you're here, Black? Besides darkening my doorway with your trips down memory lane of all the professors you shagged?"

Sirius clapped his hands together with a tight grin.

"I don't like you, and I want you to stay away from Lily. That's all I came here to say."

"Last time I checked, I didn't ask you," he replied with a snort.

Sirius shivered. "Ooh, how snappy. Quaking in my shoes, Snivelly. But seriously," he strode towards the other man, who had risen from his desk. With one hand in his pocket and the other in the air, he continued to close the distance between them. "You're a menace to society, with all your dark magic and your Death Eater friends, and did I mention…?" The hand that had been gesturing to higher ideals curled into a fist, and in the space of a second, Sirius tightened his lips and tilted his shoulder, bringing the fist back to connect with Severus's jaw. "I don't like you," he finished with a smile.

"Oh how quickly the bonds of comraderie are broken. Then again, I should expect as much from a _Black_ – betrayal is in your _blood_."

Sirius ignored the jibe and began to speak, as though standing on a stage to a captive audience. "You make her miserable, Snape. Think about _that_. If you love her so damn much, leave her alone. You're not good enough for her, you _coward_."

Severus looked back up at Black, and felt an eerie déjà vu as he touched his mouth. At least this time his lip wasn't split. "Are we going to have this conversation again?"

"Lily isn't going to break it up this time. This time I intend to settle a few things," he shifted his body again to throw another punch, but Severus reached up and caught his fist in his hand, twisting and pulling down. Sirius attempted to hook with his left hand, but Severus pushed down on his shoulder, blocking the movement of his arm.

Strength was something Sirius Black _looked_ like he had, and Severus Snape most definitely did not. But while Sirius had been punished by his parents with a wand, Severus was punished by his father with a fist – and after watching his mother suffer the same, he found that the darkness inside of him fueled his abilities more than muscle tone.

Black fell to the ground suddenly, on his knees, but did not let the moment pass. Feeling he'd won the fight, he threw Sirius's fist away from him and stepped away, turning his back.

Sirius raised his wand.

"I would not do that if I were you."

"And why is that?"

"Because your good graces in Lily's name have just run out," he said monotonously.

Sirius Black stood, with a last glare thrown at the other man who had damaged his Black pride.

"That's a good doggie. Run back home with your tail between your legs." Snape rasped loudly after him, never turning to face the door.

# # # # #

He had exactly twelve minutes to recover before his door swung open again.

"I tell you Black, that is the last time you hit me. If you're back for more, I suggest rethinking it before I get _really_ angry," he said darkly, his back turned.

"Are you saying you didn't deserve it this time?"

Severus whirled on his heel, confronting the new player. She stood straight as a post beam, arms crossed on her chest.

"Oh lovely. Just who I wanted to see."

"Not ready to apologize then, are we? Fine," she uncrossed her arms and turned her shoulders as though to leave.

"Dammit, Lily! What can't you just _leave me alone?!_"

She stared at him, her jaw tensing, her teeth clenching. "Isn't that what I was doing? I was _excusing _myself from your presence. Wouldn't want to _bother _you."

"Oh come off it! It's _over_! Go play house with someone else! Stay _out _of my life!"

"Is that what you want me to do? Is it? You want me to walk out that door and never come back? Because I will. I've done it before!"

He was incensed on the heels of a previous altercation, and found he was just too tired to placate and make excuses.

"You can't just lay this all at my feet!"

"Lay it all at _your _feet?! What the hell do you think _I've_ been doing?! Raising a child alone, that's what! I'm sorry that if you want me, you get the whole package! I'm sorry that that doesn't fit in your pretty little picture of what you and me is supposed to be! I had a _life_, Severus! A life that I'm working very hard to rebuild, and I _thought _you wanted to be a part of that!"

"I did, Lily! I _did_ want to be a part of your life!" He turned away from her, but the words "I do," were still audible. He took a deep breath and turned back to face her. "But I can't be that, I can't be that now," his voice had dropped in volume, painfully aware of how it echoed off the mortar and stone of the dungeon walls.

"Can't, or _won't_."

He shook his head at her, his eyes black with anger. "I _won't_."

She snorted. "I knew it. You're a coward."

"I'm no coward, _you_ are. Jumping in bed with the first warm body you can get your hands on because you _can't stand to be alone_."

She shook her head. "Warm body, my arse. You have never been warm to anyone in your _entire life_. All you ever cared about was what _you _wanted."

He managed to look incredulous despite the seething ire that came off him in waves. He raised his chin and eyed her, the muscles in his neck relaxing slightly.

"No, Lily. Once I did care what you thought of me. Once I did care very much. I cared so much I thought I could really impress you, become such a powerful wizard that you would drop James Potter and his lackeys like a bad habit."

"Oh, oh, so now you're laying the blame at _my feet?!_" She stabbed a finger into her chest. "No. No, Severus Snape. You did that _all on your own_. I tried to get you to give it up, tried to make you see that you didn't need Dark Arts to get my attention. You _had_ my attention." She leaned back on her stance, hip jutted to the side, and crossed her arms over her chest again. "But a girl doesn't like to be ignored, Severus. You ignored me. Then you insulted me, and so I found someone else. Someone else who I could love, and," she uncrossed her arms and leaned her body towards him, "who was _actually capable_ of loving me back!"

"The only person James Potter was capable of loving was himself."

"Don't you dare." Her voice had dropped to a dangerous rasp.

"Don't I dare? Don't I? Because he's _dead_, Lily! I can't be James Potter, even if some warped part of my mind _wanted _to just to _make you happy_."

She shook her head again, and let out a huff, making a face and then looking off into the ceiling. "I never asked you to, I never wanted you to. Making that assumption is entirely on your shoulders."

"Oh, and asking me to play daddy to James's kid isn't trying to put me in his shoes?"

"I _knew_ it. I bloody fucking _knew_ it."

"No, no you don't know it at all. There are some things you _don't _know, Lily _Potter_. I can't be James, can't be a father to _his son_ because I know that if I screwed up, if something _I did_ screwed that kid up, that little version of James you're trying so hard to turn into his little _clone_, that you would have no one to blame _but _me. You'd hate me for messing up what you and he had so _wonderfully, _so_ beautifully _crafted, the last thing you have left of him. And then I'd be really buggered, because I'd've screwed up someone else's life besides my own. It'd be _my fault_ that he was a fuck-up, and that you had turned into some hateful _wretch_ because of me. I won't have him become _me _and I won't have you become _my mother_!"

She was still angry, but it seemed to bleed away from her with his last words. They had the ring of truth to them, not just the sound of avoiding the reality of life. His father had been a drunk, and his mother had hated him – but not hated him enough to take her child and get out of there. And so her child had fallen asleep at night to the sounds of raised voices, swinging fists, and breaking bottles. He had lived his childhood in a home with a woman who spoke little, and when she did, they were never words of kindness.

"_Mum, this is Lily, this is the girl I told you about, lives around the block."_

_Eileen Snape had a permanent sneer on her face, and her eyes were so dark as to make Lily think of death. Sometimes when Sev got angry, irrationally, stupidly, angry, his eyes were like that. She much preferred when he was happy, or at least, not that, because then his eyes were the colour of dark chocolate, like Green & Blacks, which her mother hid in the refrigerator behind the eggs._

"_Nice to meet you, Mrs. Snape."_

_Eileen just sniffed once, and continued to stare at her. Lily tried to smile, but when her outstretched hand remained untouched, she let it fall to her side, and tried desperately not to fidget. Her mother always said that fidgeting was rude._

"_Mum, we're going to go up to my room, okay? Just got some homework to do."_

"_Homework," Eileen said flatly, glaring at her son, and she narrowed her eyes, and looked Lily up and down, sizing her up. It made Lily's skin crawl._

"_Come on Lily," Sev whispered, and nodded his head towards the narrow staircase just around the corner from the dining room, which was dimly lit by a yellowing bulb._

_Lily tried again to make a good impression. "Lovely to meet you," she said, and even curtsied._

_Eileen lifted her head slightly and looked down at Lily like one might a bug. Lily saw her expression when she raised her head, and flushed. She saw that Sev stood at the base of the staircase, on the dark green carpet of the living room, his arms folded across his chest. She hurried over to him, and he whispered to her._

"_Second door on the left. Says 'do not enter'. But it's okay, I took the hex off so you could go in. I'll be right up."_

_Lily just nodded, and quickly climbed the stairs. She leaned over the banister, but saw only the stairwell below. She heard voices, and craned her neck to hear them._

"_Why can't you be nice to my friends?"_

"_She's a mudblood."_

"_Don't _call _her that!" Then there was a crash, like the sound of teacups swept off a countertop._

"_Your father won't like that. You've broken his favourite service."_

"_Father doesn't _have _a favourite service. You don't need teacups to get sodding pissed on cheap whiskey!"_

_Then there was a sound of a slap._

"_Don't you _dare _speak of your father that way!"_

"_All I wanted was for you to be nice to her!"_

"_Oh, _like _her, do you?" She sounded haughty to Lily's ear._

"_She's my _friend_, Mum."_

"_You don't have _friends_ over only to retreat up to your _room_, boy."_

"_Is that what you think is going on, Mum?"_

_Lily heard her sniff again._

"_Just don't get her pregnant."_

"_Mum!"_

"_And make sure she's gone before your father comes home. Last thing he wants is you screwing around with a daft bird up in your room."_

"_She's not daft, Mum," he said softly. "She's really smart."_

"_Then what's she need _tutoring_ for, eh?"_

"_I didn't say I was tutoring her! I said we were doing homework!"_

"_Homework you couldn't do on your own? That she couldn't do at her own house?"_

"_Oh, so just because I have a friend, who's a girl, who doesn't need me to _do_ her homework _for _her, means that she's some stupid slut that I mean to have my way with? Can't you just believe that she's a friend, that she just _likes _me without any ulterior motive? That maybe she just _wants_ to do her homework with me because we get on?"_

_Eileen sniffed again. Lily was coming around to the thought that that noise would become one she would list on her list of 'things I hate'._

"_Everyone uses everyone, Severus. You just haven't figured out why she's using you."_

_There was silence._

"_She's not like that."_

"_Hmpf."_

_Then there was the sound of teacups, and she thought she heard Eileen's voice say 'reparo'. And then she heard footfall, and darted down the hallway to the room marked 'do not enter' and tugged open the door and threw herself in, making herself comfortable on the floor and spreading out her textbooks, taking no notice of décor of the room, and desperately trying to lower her blood pressure, slow her heartbeat. He'd be terribly cross if he realized she was eavesdropping._

_She heard the jostle of teacups, and the door handle turned, and Severus slipped in, angling body and tea service so that he opened the door as narrowly as possible._

"_Sorry. Mum couldn't find her wand – so I had to boil the water the old fashioned way," he said, not looking at her, and she pretended not to notice the red mark on his face._

_Just like she pretended not to notice the bruises and the scrapes and the other marks since they were nine._

"_I grew up with the old fashioned way, Sev. It's fine, lovely, in fact." She picked up the teapot and poured two cups. Two sugars in hers, nothing in his. She handed him the teacup._

_And she pretended she didn't overhear, and he pretended nothing had happened, and thanked every deity he could think of that she was pretending she didn't overhear. He knew she did. And he was glad she pretended._

Lily cocked her head, arms crossed on her chest, and took him in. The way he stood, wary, like he would bolt any moment. The way his entire body was afraid, the way his face was trying very hard not to betray what might be described as anguish.

Severus Snape wasn't a role model of a man, certainly; but neither was he the hand of the devil. He had charmed her once. She knew he was a good man under his façade. And ever, when she wasn't sure, she _believed _he was.

But she had thought he was avoiding reality, trying to re-create their youth, trying to keep her son out of the picture as though he could make him disappear and he could have that chance at kindling a school romance that never happened. It had never occurred to her that he was afraid.

She had never thought of him as afraid.

"_I'm twenty-two years old and I'm _afraid_ of what lurks in the darkness…"_

"Severus. Is it because of them? Is it because of Sirius, and Remus? Why are you afraid of us? Why are you afraid of being happy?"

"What?" He looked confused at the abrupt change of subject.

"What they did to you, that night down at the Whomping Willow."

"Why do you _care_?" He sneered.

"I want to know. Tell me."

He snorted. "And what? You'll make it all better? You'll suddenly decide that your best friend, Sirius Black, is really the _waste_ I've been telling you he is, and renounce him? Hardly."

"You're right. I wouldn't. But that shouldn't have anything to do with us. I'm not them – they do not define me. I am a separate person, and I want an explanation. Over and over and over again, I've left the door open, and you keep slamming it in my face." She sighed. "I'm tired, Severus."

He stared at her, flush fading from her face and the bit of her chest he could see above the scooping neck of her top. She raised an eyebrow at him, impatient. "Well?"

"Black and Lupin and your husband made my life miserable, but that's not all of who I am. Something in me saw something appealing in those tomes of Dark magics, in those people who practiced them. I don't know why, I don't know what that means." He looked away. "I know I can't be trusted," he trailed off.

She wondered what had happened to her that her powers of imagination had been so weakened as of late. There were so many things that never crossed her mind, focused, as she was, on single possible outcomes. She did ponder, once or twice, but like so many other things, the possibility never occurred to her. He was a Potions Master, and he was so secretive…he could have kept it from her.

"Did he…?"

"No. I don't go _lycanthrope_ every full moon. That pleasure is still all Lupin's," he said flatly.

"And James?"

"Yes, as much as I hate to admit it. He actually felt Black had gone too far, and pulled me out. I say it was no rescue because I imagine he'd let Black do it, only to be overcome by a sudden attack of conscience. Black wanted to kill me. Strange, though, how "too far" does apply to my _life_ but not to humiliating me to the point I _wish _I was dead."

She wasn't sure what to make of all this. She had so much to process. She stared at him a full minute.

"I'm going, Severus." She turned on her heel and started for the door, which was still open. She decided she didn't care who had heard them, their words no doubt echoing up the stairwell.

"Oh, so _now _you walk out. Take the high road, Lily Potter, because the low road is getting awfully crowded down here!"

She kept walking, hoping the breeze of the stairwell would help her start to sort out all the fired and jumbled thoughts that crowded her head.

* * *

A/N: I just like Sirius in a fistfight. I can't promise this will be the last of them. I don't know. I'm obviously not writing this so much as letting it borrow my sweet 77 wpm typing skills.


	21. Chapter 21

Sirius flinched when she slapped him, but only the briefest of reactions. He felt his cheek grow hot where her hand had connected, and his tongue explored the upper gum, feeling it puff and swell as he stood there.

"Why? Why?" She was crying now, even as her face was contorted in anger. "Why do you do this to me? I thought we were over this, I thought we were over you going after him?"

"Still love him then?" He said it so quietly and calmly, as though she hadn't just hit him.

"Sirius, I can't take it anymore. I can't take my best friend being this way. I can't. It tears me apart that I had to keep it a secret. And maybe that's why I let it end – I can't choose sides. Even if he didn't have the guts to fight for me, I don't want you fighting my battles for me either."

"Lily." His voice was that of defeat, but he couldn't help reaching out his hand towards her, to take her hand in his, one last try.

She looked down at where his fingers brushed hers, and she pulled her hand away.

"No, Sirius," she replied quietly and turned and walked away.

# # # # #

The fistfight takes place in their favorite venue – the abandoned Potions classroom. The players are the same, but this time there is no lead-up, no introduction with overtures and sarcasm. There is simply two men in a room, and a meeting of eyes, and an understanding. Punches are thrown, lips split, eyes blacked.

In the end, two men who appear at first glance to be asking for bets to be placed, turn out to be quite evenly matched. The reach of one makes up for the force of the other. Both men fight for the same thing, even though at the same time, neither of them want it in the same way they did when they should have had this discussion. They both wonder, amidst spitting blood and right hooks, why they didn't do this years ago and why they're both so angry at a dead man.

It's over only because they simply lost the taste for it. No one wins, but both of them look like they lost. Wordlessly, they retreat into the professor's office, and the professor pours them each a tumbler of scotch, which they sip painfully - swirling it in their mouths filled with open wounds.

"Please tell me there's another guy somewhere who has crawled off into the bushes to die. Please tell me he was very evil and deserved to get the stuffing beaten out of him the old fashioned way instead of simply being hexed into next week like a couple of civilized, grown wizards would be expected to do."

"Remus."

"Remus."

The two men raised their glasses to the third who stands in the doorway, shaking his head.

When he pulls Sirius out of the chair, Remus says "say goodbye to your new friend" and Severus replies "we are _not_ friends", to which Sirius adds "damn right, dirty _snake_" and Severus just says "pussy".

# # # # #

Remus Lupin entered the dungeon classroom and found it empty. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and walked through the rows between the desks to the Potions Master's office. He stood in the doorway, and rocked back and forth on his heels.

Severus did not even look up.

"It's not the full moon, Lupin. You can go away now. Shoo." He made a waving motion with his free hand.

"Tch tch, Sev."

"Don't call me that," he said, never looking up from the paper he was grading.

Remus waltzed into the office, and sat down in the chair across from the desk. Severus looked up at him without lifting his head.

Remus just gave him a tight smile.

Severus sat up, and put down his quill and folded his hands in front of him on his desk. "I see we're having another miscommunication. I said leave. Means the opposite of 'please, take a seat'. I know we've been over this."

Remus smiled more genuinely this time. "Now I get it. You just always sound so angry and eeeevil." He wiggled his fingers towards the other man. "But you're a funny guy. Really."

Severus did not reply, but realized the other man would not leave. So he went back to grading his paper, hoping that, like many other things in his life, if he just ignored him, he would go away.

"Seeeeverus."

"I have nothing to say to you, Lupin. Bugger off."

Remus took his hands out of his pockets and threw them up in the air, giving up his big idea of convincing the other man with logic. He felt a little tug of sadness at yet another failure in logic – the thing which all others were _supposed_ to obey.

"Come off it you broody bastard! Are you _trying _to ruin your life?!"

"Yes, thank you. Now goodbye."

"I know you still love her."

Severus ignored him.

"And the feeling's mutual," he continued.

There was silence, and Lupin could almost _see_ the wheels turning in the Potions Master's mind.

"Impossible," he whispered.

"Impossible, you say? Nay, I reply."

"I say impossible because she can't possibly love me. She feels sorry for me, maybe. But she doesn't love me," he said, still quiet.

"I think you're wrong."

"Why?"

Remus leaned forward in his chair. "Because she does, you twit. I don't know why. If she didn't love you, she wouldn't be hurting as much as she is."

Severus looked up this time, and his eyes implored the man who sat across from him, the sandy-haired peer whom he had once regarded with extreme distaste and now…less so.

"I never wanted to hurt her."

"I know."

"How? How do you know? You don't know me!"

Remus smiled. "I know you a lot better than you think. I know you've waited your whole life for one woman, and now you have her. I know you wouldn't throw her away as easily as all that." He pushed his chair back, scraping loudly on the stone floor.

"I'm going 'round for dinner next Thursday. 'Bout seven."

"And I care, why?"

"Just thought you'd like to know."

Remus turned and opened the office door, shutting it behind him with a soft click!

# # # # #

Lily was just sitting herself down, across from Remus, next to Sirius, at the small kitchen table, when the bell rang.

She got back up, confused. "Who could that be at this hour?" She could not think of a single soul, because who would ring the bell?

Lupin looked surprised for a moment, and then just shrugged.

Sirius began to rise. "I can get it, Lils."

"No, no, sit back down. Eat your dinner. I'll get it. Probably nothing."

He shrugged, not having to be told twice to enjoy her cooking. He picked up his fork and began to tuck in.

Lily opened the door, speaking as she did. "Yes? Can I…"

Her mouth closed at seeing the man who stood on her doorstep.

"Severus."

"Lily."

"Can I help you?"

He proffered flowers, bringing to mind the last time he rang the bell, the last time he brought flowers to her door.

She just looked at the flowers, and then at him.

"What do you want?"

He swallowed. "A second chance?"

"Came and went," she said, the door still not open terribly wide.

"A third, then?"

"What for?"

"Because…because I love you."

She frowned. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head. She was still a little angry. No turning back now, though.

"Those for me?"

"Yes."

She took the flowers from his hand, and walked away from the door, leaving it open.

_Well, that's no 'come in, make yourself at home', but she also didn't slam it in my face_.

He followed her in, and closed the door behind him.

"Lils? Who was at the door?" a voice called from the kitchen.

_Black. Great._

Lily stalked into the kitchen, and did not answer the question. She laid the flowers down on the counter, and opened a cupboard, reaching up for a vase.

"Flowers? Who brought you flowers?" Sirius inquired, and then, from the corner of his eye, he saw Remus turn his head. Sirius followed suit, tipping back his chair and saw the man who walked to stand in the doorway.

"Sorry. Didn't know you were having company," he said quietly.

"Snape." Sirius said simply. He looked at Remus, who again had that look of meddling innocence about him.

"Black. Lupin." He nodded his head at both men. "Perhaps…I should come back at a another time?"

The vase was pulled out of the cupboard, and set on the counter. That door was closed, and another was opened, and a plate and a glass were removed. They were set at the end of the table, empty seats separating his place from both her and Remus, letting him stare directly down the table at Sirius.

"Do you want to stay, or what?" She asked him, one hand on her hip, looking very no-nonsense.

"If you're sure…" he began, ignoring his audience.

She gestured to the place setting. He shuffled behind Lupin, and took a seat. She picked the serving spoon out of the casserole dish and gave him two large scoops, more than he would ever eat. Then she bestows upon his plate a large spoonful of green beans - not his favorite vegetable.

She knew these things.

She was doing it on purpose.

_Not going to make it easy for me, are you darling?_

He took a deep breath, and when she sat back down, and gestured sharply to the other two to stop staring and eat, he stuck his fork in the pile of casserole, exhaling deeply, as though it would make more room in his stomach.

They ate in verbal silence, the only noise was that of clinking forks against plates, and the soft sound of chewing.

Even Sirius managed to keep his mouth shut, but did not deny himself several withering glances down the table. Remus gave him a small, strained smile.

At least it was a start.


End file.
